


graceful.

by PorcelainCas



Category: Supernatural, Wayward Sisters (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Vessel Consent Issues, Wayward Sisters Big Bang 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 12:02:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 56,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16197146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PorcelainCas/pseuds/PorcelainCas
Summary: After awakening in a hospital in Sioux Falls with no memories of how she got there, Claire is left in a strange world forwarded six months after the incident at the Larsen Brothers Shipyard. Everything is the same...except that Kaia is well and alive, and Claire and Kaia have apparently been dating for months. But it doesn’t take long before things don’t add up with Kaia herself beginning to act odd, and investigations into the anomalies turn up with an unfamiliar name from Claire’s own hunting journal: Sister Jo.





	1. Act One

**Author's Note:**

> It's finally done!!  
> Thank you so much to [julia-sets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crayola/pseuds/julia-sets) for being such an amazing beta!
> 
> _warning: this work deals with consent issues concerning angel vessels_

ACT ONE

The Lake Behind the House

i.

Claire’s head was pounding before she even opened her eyes.

She groaned, reaching up to rub the spot on the back of her skull where she could feel the low incessant thrum beating out a rhythm. With her other hand, she pushed herself into a sitting position on the bed. The worn and thin materials of the sheets would have told her that she was in a hospital bed even if the faint scent of antiseptics and the scratchy material of the gown she wore hadn't. She was bedridden in a hospital, but somehow it felt wrong. There was something important, something she had to do…

“And Sleeping Beauty is finally awake.”

The sardonic tone was unmistakable even in Claire’s muddled state. She turned to see Alex with a clipboard tucked under her arm and one side of her lips tugged upwards in a grimace. She was definitely in a hospital in Sioux Falls, but she had no idea how she got here in the first place.

“What happened?” Claire asked.

“Bad hunt, apparently,” Alex said with a roll of her eyes. When she spotted Claire instinctively reaching down to remove the hypodermic needles from her skin she scowled and swatted her hands away from them.

“You need to keep those in,” Alex insisted. “You’ve been out for about three days now and you need some time to recover before I can legally let you go.” Alex raised an eyebrow at her like she expected Claire to elaborate on how she had arrived in this situation, but Claire had no definitive answer to give her. Three days ago, she had been hunting something…and there was a flash of blue light.

The pounding in Claire’s head grew stronger and she winced, massaging one side of her temples in an attempt to mitigate the pain.

“Need some meds?” Alex asked calmly. “I can grab you some painkillers from the supply.”

“I’m good,” Claire said, managing to sit upright again now that the pounding eased into something more like a beating pulse on the right side of her head. It still hurt though, but the pain was becoming more distant by the second. She had been in the midst of remembering something, but now it was gone, and she clenched her fists in frustration.

Alex checked the watch on her wrist and sighed. She saw Claire watching her and explained, “She always visits at this hour. I’ll leave you lovebirds to it, don’t worry.”

“Lovebirds?” Claire asked, half affronted at the term and half bewildered.

It looked like Alex was resisting the urge to roll her eyes again, though the exasperation on her face made it clear what she was feeling. “Unless Jody’s here today instead. Well – moment of truth,” she said when there was a knock on the closed door.

Claire was overcome with a sudden nervousness while Alex went to open the door. She had no idea what Alex was talking about when she mentioned lovebirds, and she was honestly afraid of the answer. Though she didn’t have time to dwell over the word choice any longer because it turned out to be Jody that strolled right into the room, looking both parts sleep-deprived and grumpy, but Claire didn’t miss the way her entire face lit up in relief the minute her eyes landed on Claire before she shifted back to grumpy worriedness.

“Hey,” she greeted Jody.

Jody’s mouth was pulled into a stern frown, but Claire could see her relief. “Never do that again,” she ordered.

“Yeah well, problem is that I can’t even remember what I did,” she half-mumbled without looking at Alex or Jody.

Her admittance didn’t garner the reaction that she expected. She let the silence stretch out a little longer before she finally sneaked a glance. Alex was staring at her clipboard and writing notes so hard that Claire thought her clipboard would break, and Jody’s face was even more grim than before if possible. Claire didn’t have to be a nurse in training to know that something was wrong with her.

“Short-term memory loss due to head trauma,” Alex said without looking up. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

It took a second for Claire to realize that the question was directed at her. She paused and tried to conjure up the last thing she remembered. There was the flash of blue light, but what was before that? The harder she thought, the more it all started to blur together until one image flashed into clarity – the one that had been haunting her since it happened. Claire inhaled and willed the image away. “The last thing I remember is seeing this bright blue light,” Claire said firmly. “And now I’m here.”

Neither Alex nor Jody’s demeanour changed, though it looked like Alex was frowning harder now.

“I’ll let the doctors know so they can run more tests,” Alex announced with the final stroke of her pen. “For now –”

“I’m not staying,” Claire interrupted.

Now Alex was targeting that frown at Claire. “Uh, yeah you are. We don’t even know what’s wrong with you.”

“Yes, we do,” Claire rebutted. “I have short-term memory loss after a bad hunt. So what? It happens to the best of us, but I’m not going to sit around and do nothing when…” The words were at the tip of her tongue, but for some reason she couldn’t grasp them, and she herself wasn’t sure what she was talking about. Without an argument for her actions, she was at a loss, and she looked at Jody for some sort of support though she didn’t have much hope.

Jody wasn’t giving Claire the usual stern glower that she was used to. Her eyebrows were pulled together in thought, and when she spoke, it was to the surprise of both Claire and Alex.

“I’m not saying Claire’s right,” she began, “but I don’t think staying here is going to help her. Alex, get her checked out.”

Alex’s mouth pulled together into a tight grimace but if she had any protests, she didn’t voice them. “Whatever you say,” she said, using her nonchalant tone, but Claire could tell that she was trying not to argue with Jody. Claire watched her leave, trying not to feel too bad about potentially driving a wedge between Jody and Alex.

“Come on, let’s get you out,” Jody said, moving to help Claire remove the needles that she was plugged into. When Claire was finally free, she slid off the bed and stood up for what seemed like the first time in weeks. Her legs wobbled, and she instantly collapsed into Jody’s arms.

“Take it easy,” Jody said, supporting Claire’s weight.

“I’m fine,” Claire insisted, but she didn’t try to push Jody away. She took a few shallow breaths and waited for the wave of vertigo to subside before she attempted to stand on her own again. “See? Just dandy.”

“Don’t push yourself so hard,” Jody chided her now that Claire was back on her own two feet. “You’re still recovering.”

“From what?” Claire only meant to ask the question, but it came out like a demand and she decided to roll with it. “Nobody told me anything about what’s going on and the most I know is that I had a bad hunt and now I have memory loss.” Claire resisted adding the part where Alex talked about _lovebird_. She’d prefer to deal with that piece of information later when she got everything in order. “What happened?”

The grim expression on Jody’s face told everything Claire needed to know about the gravity of the situation. “You were hunting angels,” Jody said.

“What?” The news came as a shock to her. Sure, she wasn’t a fan of angels after what they did to her family, to say the least, but it wasn’t like she actively sought them out like Jody seemed to be suggesting. She wasn’t sure what to do with the information, especially knowing that something pushed her over the ledge into actively hunting them.

“That’s what the blue light you mentioned was: angels. They spared you guys, but…” Jody shook her head in dismay and Claire figured that that was all she was getting out of Jody for today, even though it had given her more questions than answers. Now she knew she had been hunting angels but why? And Jody had said _you guys_ , meaning that there was someone with her, and certainly Alex wasn’t the other party that was involved. She wanted to probe some more but she got the impression that she wouldn’t be receiving any more answers.

“Well, can’t wait to head home,” Claire said, changing the subject. “But first.” She spread her arms from her sides and looking down at the hospital gown that she was wearing that was growing scratchier on her skin by the minute. “Do you have a change of clothes?”

 

ii.

Claire stared out the passenger side of the window, watching the houses pass by and trying to think of some sort of reply to Jody. She could feel the bile crawling up her throat and she swallowed it down so it rested in agitation inside her stomach.

“So, six months, huh?” she said casually like Jody had asked her to apply to College again and she was pushing the date back. Except this wasn’t the situation, and Jody had just informed her that she was missing six months of her life. She wasn’t sure if the definition of short-term memory loss applied to such a long stretch of time, and she was afraid to consider the alternative: that the angels had erased her memories and they were irretrievable.

“If the last thing you remember is a month after what happened at the Larsen Brothers Shipyard, I would say that’s around six months ago,” Jody replied. It didn’t make Claire feel any better.

“And I was hunting angels right before this,” Claire repeated. “With someone else.”

There was no response. She looked over to see Jody’s lips pursed into a tight line, and she knew that she was venturing forth into territory that Jody didn’t want her to explore yet for whatever reason. Being the person she was, Claire pressed on further.

“With Patience,” Claire guessed. It had to be Patience. She was the newbie and if Claire had to guess what transpired, she had probably dragged Patience into a lot of danger. That seemed like the kind of thing that had a high chance of happening, Claire admitted to herself.

Again, there was no reply. Jody turned down another lane and they drove on for a minute before Claire couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

She sighed, leaning her head back into her seat and stared at the road in front of her. “Are you going to tell me what happened or am I just going to have to find out on my own?” Jody was withholding key information from her, and she knew her reasoning was probably that it was for Claire’s own good, but Claire had heard this a hundred times before, and she couldn’t quench her desire to know.

“You were hunting angels,” Jody began, her voice carefully even. “And it got out of hand. When we found you, you were already unconscious. We had to take you to the hospital where you spent the next few days recovering.”

“And then I woke up with memory loss,” Claire added helpfully. “So what’s the deal with that? What did Alex say about it?”

“Nothing you haven’t already heard,” Jody said, but there was a tension to her words, and Claire knew that it wasn’t the whole story and there were still vital pieces missing that Jody wasn’t handing over. Claire bit her lip, trying to think of something she could say to convince Jody to spill the beans. Clearly she had done something extremely reckless for Jody to keep information from her, but Claire wasn’t sure how to rectify Jody’s lack of faith in her when she didn’t even know what she did.

She sighed, leaning back once again and accepting defeat. She would just have to do some investigation later instead of pulling teeth like this.

They were turning around a bend now and Claire knew that Jody’s house would be just a little further down. Six months had passed since from what Claire remembered, and street was now adorned with the autumn colours of trees under the late afternoon sky.

Claire squinted at something in the near distance, leaning closer to the passenger window to get a closer look. When the thicket of trees parted, Claire saw it: a stretch of water beyond the trees. In a moment, it was hidden under the leafage again, though Claire could almost see it gleaming through the foliage.

She didn’t remember there being a lake near the house. She glanced over at Jody but if Jody had seen it, she didn’t have any reaction. The verdure broke apart again when they neared Jody’s house and Claire drank in the sight. It was a lake of crystal blue expanse of water stretched out for miles shimmering underneath the sunset. And it was right behind Jody’s house.

She stared at the lake, wondering if it was a manifestation of her imagination, but decided it wasn’t when it didn’t disappear after some rapid blinking. Her face must have been pressed against the window of the car because she heard Jody chuckle beside her.

“That’s certainly the first time you’ve been excited to be escorted home,” she joked.

“No, the lake…” Claire began but the words died in her throat. She didn’t want to worry Jody any more than she already had. And putting these thoughts into words only fuelled her anxieties about the so-called angels she was hunting tampering with her memory. She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

“You should tell me if something’s wrong,” Jody lectured, even though they were nearly pulling into the driveway. Claire sighed, crossing her arms and braced herself only for Jody to let out a curse and hit the brakes for a second by accident.

“I told her not to do that. That boat needs reparations,” Jody said, staring out of Claire’s window at the lake. Now that Claire was looking again, she saw that there was a figure on the edges of a shore in what appeared to be a small rowboat. It was too far away for Claire to make out who it was, but by Jody’s tone, it was clear that this was likely someone she knew.

Jody pulled into the driveway a little quicker than Claire would have liked it, got out of the car and tossed Claire the keys. “You head inside first,” she told her and then ran to the back of the house without another word to her, though Claire could hear Jody’s yell of, “Patience! Patience!” growing further away.

Shaking off the confusion, Claire got out of the car and nearly stumbled when she stood up. She must have been out for days recovering, but she still felt like she had just got out of a particularly nasty fight. She’d had plenty of those before, like that time she had a run-in with a werewolf after an argument with Sam Winchester… She shuddered at the thought. She hoped that something like that hadn’t happened this time with the supposed angels she had been fighting, though the memory loss made her uneasy.

After taking a few moments to steady herself, she headed inside the house, bracing herself to be greeted with drastic interior changes, but it was just like she remembered: the roominess of the living room with its two couches facing the partition to the kitchen and the distinctive feeling of warmth and home. Claire took in a deep breath and exhaled; the best thing to do now was to get settled down before she started investigating. She started down to where her room was and was stopped when she heard a loud crash coming from the direction of the bathroom.

Claire immediately went into her hunter mode, hand sliding to her back pocket instinctively only to curse in her head when she remembered that she didn’t have any weapons on her. As far as she knew, only Jody and Patience were occupying the house, and they were both outside. Somebody else was inside the house. As to who it was, Claire had no guesses. It could be a monster, but she wouldn’t rule out an opportunistic, if clumsy, thief.

There was another crash this time, and it sounded like multiple things had fallen onto the floor in the bathroom.

She decided that she didn’t have time to call Jody back in to help out, so she grabbed the nearest heavy object she saw, which happened to be crowbar propped up on the wall. Somebody had probably just come home from a ghost hunt, she thought.

Claire crept up to the bathroom with the crowbar. This time she was close enough to the closed door to realize that it was sound of drawers opening and closing while objects fell to the ground in the aftermath. Someone was rummaging through the supplies in there, and Claire surmised that it must be some sort of robber though her grip on the crowbar didn’t loosen.

She was standing in front of the door now, holding the crowbar over her head. She was tempted to kick the door down and knock out whoever was in there, but she got the feeling that Jody wouldn’t appreciate the destruction in case it was someone that she was supposed to know. After all, she was missing six months of her memory and any wayward girl could have moved in during that timespan.

Claire didn’t have to contemplate long on whether she should kick down the door or wait until whoever was in there came out because there was a click of the door unlocking just before it swung open.

Claire almost dropped the crowbar she was holding. She slowly lowered it and stared at the other person, her jaw dropping in disbelief and her heart hammering so loud she could hear it reverberating inside of her ears.

“Kaia?”

Her voice came out in a croak like she hadn’t spoken in years, and part of that was true. She may not have had memories of the past six months, but she did remember refusing to talk about Kaia with anybody after what happened. Claire didn’t think she’d go back on her word unless something had happened to change that. Though now Kaia was standing in front of her in Jody’s house, alive, and Claire was at a loss for words.

Kaia was frozen at the door and staring at Claire in fright without saying a word, holding multiple bottles of pills in both of her hands. Claire tried not to panic as she took it all in. Kaia’s curly hair was in an disarray, and she was wearing that baggy hoodie that Claire remembered her in when they first met.

No, Claire thought, this isn’t Kaia. Kaia died in the Bad Place, approximately half a year ago according to what Claire had been told. This was something else – a shapeshifter maybe. She had nothing silver on her, but she had to act before the shifter did.

“You’re not Kaia,” Claire said, holding out the crowbar protectively in front of her. “You’re a shifter. Why are you here?” For all her bravado, she was practically weaponless against the shifter, and there was a tremor in her voice. For a shifter to take Kaia’s form… They must have known how to pick apart Claire’s weak spot. She couldn’t look at Kaia’s face – the shifter’s face, she reminded herself – without remembering how she failed her. Her palms were slippery, and the crowbar was sliding out of her clutch.

Kaia’s eyes darted around the room like she was looking for some sort of escape. “Claire, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just…” She gestured meaninglessly with her hands, still holding onto the pill bottles that she salvaged from the bathroom. She gave Claire a look of desperation, her eyebrows knitted together and her mouth pulled down into a slight frown that brought back painful memories and Claire took half a step back, momentarily lost in the same image replaying in her head: Kaia, lying on the ground with a spear embedded in her stomach, blood seeping through her fingers, eyes growing empty in the darkness. And all the while Claire stood by helplessly, hand clasped with Kaia’s while she tried to pretend that everything would be okay because it was all Claire’s fault that they got into this mess. That Kaia was dying. That Kaia was dead.

If the shifter was about to take the opening to attack Claire, they never got the chance because the next thing Claire knew when she finally shook herself out of the pit that had sucked her in was Patience prying the crowbar from her fingers and Jody pulling Kaia away to consult her in another room. Claire barely noticed that Patience had led her to sit down in the living room and that Patience had her hand on her shoulder and was repeatedly asking if Claire was all right.

“She’s dead,” Claire stated, searching in Patience’s eyes for the answer. Her face was impassive, and Claire grew more frantic, her heartbeat loud and insistent in her ears. “I watched her die that night. She can’t be alive.”

“Calm down, first,” Patience told her gently with an eerie kind of calmness for a girl that Claire still remembered being shell-shocked about the hunting lifestyle. She waited for Claire to take a few deep breaths before she continued. “Yes, Kaia died back then but there were some complications.” She hesitated on the word, her eyes darting quickly to the room where Jody had taken Kaia. “And it turned out that there was a way to bring her back.”

“Demon deals?” Claire asked, almost hearing the echo of Dean Winchester’s voice. He had approached her right after the incident and warned her against hasty decisions, especially those that involved demon deals. She couldn’t imagine making a deal with monsters that nearly killed her entire family when she was a child. Then again, the angels were the ones who ended up single handedly killing her parents, not the demons.

“Something like that,” Patience said, brushing off the topic with a shrug that made Claire narrow her eyes. “But the important part is that you suffered memory loss. You don’t remember anything at all from the past few months?”

Claire shook her head and looked down at her hands, wishing that she could somehow just will herself to remember, but she couldn’t no matter how hard she tried. It was all blank, like there was nothing there in the first place. The paranoia that the angels might have permanently altered her memories came creeping back in.

“That’s not good,” Patience muttered to herself, worrying her lip with her teeth. She hummed in thought for a second, pulling up her feet to place on the couch and resting her chin on her knees. “Look, I don’t want to drop this on you if you’re uncomfortable but…” She inhaled and then said it all quickly in one breath. “You and Kaia have been dating for a while and this memory loss thing is going to hurt her.”

“What?”

Patience still wasn’t looking her in the eyes. “You guys started dating a little after she came back.” Patience shrugged, unfolding her legs back to the floor. “It was a given, but Kaia’s always felt like she shouldn’t have come back. And now after your angel hunt… I know you just recovered and you don’t remember anything but don’t give her a hard time.” Patience gave her a meaningful look.

Claire was trying to take all of the information in at once: Kaia had died, but now she was alive somehow, and Claire and Kaia were dating. The latter part would have her enthused to hear in any other situation, but she was still attempting to understand how the former was true.

“So that wasn’t a shifter,” Claire said, mostly to herself.

“That was Kaia,” Patience confirmed.

“And me and Kaia are dating.”

It looked like it was taking Patience a lot of effort not to let out a sigh. “Yeah,” she said. “Long story short? Alex caught you guys making out a few months ago and I can’t say I’m surprised. Though I was surprised to hear that you enrolled in the local college together.”

“We did?” Claire frowned.

Patience gave her a pitying smile. “Yeah. And…Jody told me about the memory loss thing, but I didn’t think it was going to be this bad.” Claire held back a retort as Patience continued, “Kaia’s been pretty torn up since you were injured, and I don’t want to say that this is going to make it worse but… This is definitely going to make it hard on her.”

“What, that I tried to attack her and called her a shifter?” Claire was aiming to be snarky but when she said it, she realized how much it did sound like it would hurt Kaia. A wave of guiltiness washed over her, even though she knew that she was just acting on her hunting instincts.

“That, and the fact that you two were on a hunt together when you got injured,” Patience informed her.

“We were hunting angels together? All of us?” Claire asked incredulously. She felt like her head was spinning. She could remember sitting on the porch with Kaia under the night sky while they swapped stories with each other. Kaia had told her she wasn’t a fighter, she was a runner. And the one time she stood her ground and fought back… Even though Kaia was alive in the next room over, Claire felt a pit growing in her stomach.

“You and Kaia were hunting alone,” Patience clarified, standing up from her seat. “Look, I’ve got some tests I need to study for right now, but if you need some help adjusting while you wait for your memories to come back, I can help out.” She gave Claire a small smile from the corner of her lips. “I know Jody wants for you to regain them on your own, but I think some incentive won’t hurt.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Claire said, gratefulness flooding her chest at the knowledge that someone was promising to help her navigate her way. Patience gave her one last smile before she turned around and left her alone in the living room.

 

iii.

Claire nearly jumped when the door opened abruptly behind her.

“Don’t do that,” she said with a scowl, turning around to greet none other than Kaia Nieves. “Oh.”

“Hi,” Kaia said cautiously. She wasn’t meeting Claire’s eyes.

“What are you doing here?” Claire demanded before she remembered Patience’s words. She winced at the harshness of her tone, but she couldn’t take it back now. It was strange to regard Kaia after living with the knowledge of her death, especially since she had come back to life and they were now dating. She wasn’t sure how to deal with it, and the easy companionship they once shared was now plagued with a painful sort of awkwardness.

“This is my room,” Kaia told her like she was reciting a teleprompter script, and Claire had to wonder what Jody told her in the afternoon. “I sleep here.”

“I thought I shared this room with Patience.”

Kaia shrugged, moving past Claire without brushing against her toward the further bed. “She sleeps in the other room,” was all Kaia said. Claire watched Kaia get into the bed and pull the blankets over herself, rolling over so her back was facing Claire. “Good night.”

Some part of Claire felt miserable that whatever relationship they had was now being stunted by her memory loss. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Kaia – the opposite, really. Back then, Claire remembered wondering if she could have something with Kaia. She had just felt so comfortable with her, like she could spill her deepest secrets without fear and listen to Kaia’s secrets in return with the same amount of acceptance and understanding.

But at the same time, Claire didn’t know this Kaia who was fast-forwarded six months from the one she knew. It wasn’t like Kaia was a brand new person, but Claire was still a little wary despite Patience’s plea to take it easy.

Claire walked to turn off the light switch before she got into bed, distinctly aware of the other presence in the room. She closed her eyes, rolling over to one side while she tried to sleep, and she could hear Kaia shuffling around restlessly too. Even though Claire was tired, she couldn’t stop thinking about her on the other side of the room. She couldn’t get over the fact that Kaia was alive after all that happened, and still she felt the dull pain echoing in the center of her chest every time she thought about Kaia, stuck in grieving mode, and she didn’t know how to turn it off even though she knew that Kaia was alive.

After a few more minutes of tossing and turning from both Claire and Kaia she decided to break the silence between them in the darkness. “Sorry about what happened in the afternoon.” It was lackluster, but Claire didn’t know what else she could say to her.

“It’s fine,” came Kaia’s muffled response after a few seconds. She didn’t say anything else and Claire exhaled slowly into the darkness, searching for something else to say. She was so lost in thought that she didn’t realize how much time had passed until she heard Kaia’s soft snores from the other side of the room. She rolled over to face Kaia’s back, closing her eyes and thinking back to the last time they were both engulfed in darkness.

They were both in the Bad Place and Kaia was holding onto Claire’s hand as they ran through the darkness, the cries of monsters echoing far away in the mysterious forest around them. Kaia’s hand was warm but clammy, and she almost slipped out of Claire’s grasp a few times. She remembered how cold the air was, biting goosebumps into her skin, but at the same time it was warm, like the atmosphere was alive and she was breathing the air entering the lungs of some giant creature. The ground rumbled like a heartbeat, and Claire’s footsteps felt intrusive with every step in the underbrush.

But she kept on running through the forest with Kaia behind her, their hands linked together in cold sweatiness as they kept pushing forward with only Kaia’s directions for guidance in a dark forest that looked the same at every turn. There was a voice inside her head that told her that this was all hopeless, and that someone would end up dying anyway but she refused to listen to that voice and let herself be steered forward by Kaia deeper into the thickets of the forest.

And then Claire was opening her eyes to greet the sunlight that was pouring through the window. She didn’t remember sleeping and a glance at Kaia’s bed told her that Kaia had already left. She tried not to let that disappoint her too much, since she had some investigating to be doing and Kaia had proved to be unresponsive to Claire last night.

She got up, throwing the covers over and left to the bathroom. She could hear Alex in the living room leaving for work, and she would have said a goodbye if she weren’t afraid that she would run into Kaia. She still wasn’t sure how to act around her even after a night of sharing the same room. She also wasn’t sure if she could stand the awkwardness any longer. It felt wrong.

Claire was about to leave the bathroom after brushing her teeth when she remembered what happened yesterday. She opened the cabinets, not sure what she was expecting to find. The bottles of pills were all neatly arranged back in its place after the mess from yesterday. She looked through the shelves, noting that most of the painkillers were missing. So Kaia was raiding for painkillers yesterday, which must mean that dreamwalking was bothering her. Claire frowned at the thought. In the midst of the discovery that Kaia was alive, she had forgotten about Kaia’s suffering at the expense of her abilities.

She headed back towards the room they were sharing, making a mental list of things to ask Patience now that she had offered her help. But there was something else she knew that could help her figure things out: her hunting journal.

Claire found it facedown on the cabinet beside her bed. She flipped it over and pulled her hand away to examine the fine layer of dust that now speckled her fingers. Rubbing the dust off on her pants, she opened the journal to the first page.

There it was: the record of Kaia’s passing and her vow for vengeance. Everything afterwards was just like she remembered: the first week when she caught tail of a hunt in a nearby town and started investigating, and a few more pages documenting her questionable mythology research. That was the last thing she recalled writing, though there were still more filled pages in the journal and she turned to the next page, hoping to find an entry on Kaia’s return.

Instead, on the first new page, she found a string of numbers like coordinates, and she made a mental reminder to get that checked out later on. Then she moved on to the next page and was greeted by a massive list of crossed-out names that stretched into the next page. Claire stared at the list of names that was undeniably in her own handwriting, but none of which she recognized. She turned to the next page and discovered that the list went on. It was only after a few more pages that she realized all of these had to be angel names in no particular order. _Ishim. Hannah. Akobel. Gadreel. Ezekiel. Balthazar. Hael. Ambriel. Ephraim. Samandriel. Ion. Hester. Miriam. Tamiel_.

Claire shuddered at the last one. This was a name she would have a hard time forgetting: it belonged to the Grigori who kept her mother alive for years to drain her life force. The pain of losing her mother had healed over time but seeing the name was like jabbing a dulled knife in an old wound. She turned the page, blinking the unexpected wetness out of her eyes to find more names, though now there were a few that didn’t have strikes through it. _Naomi. Dumah. Indra. Castiel. Sister Jo._

The last two were jarring, though the shock of seeing _Castiel_ was overshadowed by the confusion that the last name brought. _Sister Jo_. That sounded more like an alias than an angel’s name, and for some reason this angel was important enough that Claire had circled the name in red and underlined it three times so deeply that the ink bled through the next few pages.

She closed the journal with a snap, placing it back on the table where she found it. Her skin was cold after reading that, and it didn’t clear up any questions she had. There was no information about Kaia, and she was almost certain the list was a report on angels that were either alive or dead. She had no idea what would have prompted her over the six months to seek this data. Though, she thought to herself, Patience might know why.

Claire headed back out to the living room where she found Patience lying on the couch, book in her hands. “Hey,” she said without looking away from her book.

“Hi.” Claire stood there for a second with her hands in her pockets, and Patience raised her eyebrows at her as if to prompt her for her question. Claire took a seat on the adjacent couch, taking a moment to gather her thoughts and then decided to cut to the chase: “Why was I after angels?”

She didn’t think that the question was too impetuous to ask, but she noticed the imperceptible way that Patience tensed up in her shoulders, and she had to wonder what she had done that was so bad.

“You shouldn’t look into that,” Patience said. So much for her only ally, Claire thought, rolling of her eyes.

“You said you would help me,” Claire pressed. “And now you’re backing out. So what point are you trying to make?”

Patience sighed, closing her book and pushing herself up into a sitting position so she could look Claire in the eyes. She had always thought of Patience as unassuming, but right now she looked ready to aim a flamethrower in Claire’s path. The sudden intensity in her stare threw Claire off guard and she fought the urge to put some distance between them.

“I said I would help you with Kaia.” Claire felt the pointed enunciation on every word. “The information you’re looking for is exactly what got you into this mess in the first place.” Patience glared at her. “Stop looking into it.”

Maybe it was Claire’s imagination, but the second she opened her mouth to protest she heard Patience’s words ringing inside her brain. For a moment, she was tempted to heed her words and throw away the journal. Her relationship with Kaia was in sore need of reparation, and her memory would come back to her eventually if she gave it some time.

She shook Patience’s warning away. There was another voice inside her head yelling at her to get a move on, an anxiousness that she couldn’t contain, and it went directly against what Patience was advising.

“Yeah, no thanks,” Claire said, standing up. Patience stared at her with an expression mixed between annoyance and frustration, but she didn’t say anything else, leaving Claire to bite back another retort and leave the room. She strided out the front door and straight towards the back of the house. She was feeling stuffy, like she had been indoors for too long, and she needed some fresh air.

Stepping outside didn’t make the feeling subside, and she resisted the urge to kick something. She felt so incapacitated, and she couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on. It didn’t help that Kaia was around and Claire had no idea how to act around her after all that happened. Claire had tried to gauge their relationship last night, but it had proven to be laborious. She was on the verge of giving up on Kaia.

And speak of the devil: Clare spotted her at the shore of the new lake. She faltered for a moment, ducking to the side of the house and watched Kaia pace back and forth on the sandy shore, eyes trained on the ground like she was looking for something. After a moment, Claire pushed herself away from her hiding place, chiding herself for being cowardly and strolled down the gentle slope towards Kaia. It’s just going to be a friendly talk, Claire told herself. Nothing to be afraid of. If Kaia sensed her presence, she didn’t give any indication of it.

“What are you looking for?” Claire called out, hoping her normalcy act was coming off, you know, _normal_. Like a part of her brain wasn’t still telling her that Kaia was supposed to be dead. Like she never failed Kaia back in the shipyard when Claire told her she’d protect her. She bit down on her lip.

Kaia paused her search, straightening to watch Claire walk down over to where she was. “I need your help,” she said, though Claire could see the hesitation in her face like she was afraid of telling the truth. Claire grimaced, remembering the last time she made the same expression. It was the night Claire helped her open up about the Bad Place. And it eventually ended up getting her killed.

But she couldn’t turn down her request. “Shoot,” Claire said.

Kaia began slowly. “Jody said you lost your memories of everything that happened,” she said, gauging Claire’s reaction to each word. She pause momentarily. “But the problem is… I don’t remember anything either.”

It took all her effort not to just stare at Kaia. “Wait,” Claire backtracked, “so you’re saying that the hunt we were supposedly on –”

“No.” Kaia shook her head. “I mean that I don’t remember _anything_.” She took a step towards Claire, her eyes imploring Claire for any kind of answer, but she didn’t know what to say to that. “We were in the Bad Place,” she insisted, and Claire felt like someone had just hit her. She swallowed down the iciness that was growing in her body, listening to Kaia speak. “And I was trying to save you… I died there. And the next thing, I was here.”

Claire didn’t know what to tell her, except that she had a gut feeling that there was something terribly wrong if the both of them had no recollection whatsoever about the hunt that put them in this situation. She wanted to ask Kaia more questions about what she remembered, but she didn’t even know where to begin.

“So we had a pretty bad hunt,” Claire surmised, even though she wasn’t really feeling up to the sardonicism.

“That’s not it,” Kaia said. She took a breath and looked ready to tell Claire the truth about what she thought happened but at that moment there were footsteps coming from the direction of the house and they both turned and looked up to see Patience running towards them, alarm written on her face.

“What are you doing?” she said, coming to a stop a few feet away from the two of them. She looked from Claire to Kaia and then back at Claire again with a glower. “I told you it was dangerous to keep searching for answers.”

Claire scowled at her. Sure, it may have been six months and Patience may have gotten more accustomed to the hunting lifestyle, but she wasn’t going to be taking orders from her. “Oh sorry, is talking to my girlfriend a crime now?” She added the _girlfriend_ part as a jab, but she decided that she liked the way that it sounded.

Patience bit her lip, and it looked like she was contemplating on whether or not she should say something. She crossed her arms and huffed. “Fine, you want the truth? You two were hunting angels, alone. But it wasn’t the angels that wiped your memories.” She darted her eyes away from them, her smug confidence dissipating for the first time. “It was Kaia.”

The first thing Claire wanted to do was call Patience a liar, but she didn’t have any evidence that said otherwise. “Her powers went out of control,” Patience explained quickly. “I don’t know how she did it, but when we found you, only Kaia was conscious. She told Jody everything.” Patience put her hands up in defence, taking a step back. “Look, I don’t know the full details but that’s what Jody told me. I’m sorry, but the fact is that you two being around each other is dangerous right now. Until we can find a way to restore your memories, that is. So don’t make this any harder on yourself,” Patience pleaded.

Claire wasn’t sure what to think, except that her head was spinning with the overload of information, and Patience’s voice had taken on that echo-like quality again: Kaia was dangerous, and they needed to be separated for the time being to do damage control. It didn’t sound like such a bad idea now that she was putting thought into it. She barely noticed that she had taken a step towards Patience until Kaia’s voice cut through her hazy mind.

“I don’t believe you,” Kaia said. She reached out and grabbed Claire’s hand with surprising strength, pulling her away from Patience, and Claire thought back to that night where they ran through the Bad Place hand in hand on their mission to find the Winchester brothers. “Come on.”

She ran, pulling Claire with her as Patience called for them to stop. Claire followed, unsure of where Kaia was taking her as they raced along the shores of the lake. She could feel the pebbles of sand crawling into the soles of her shoes, but Kaia didn’t show any signs of stopping.

When Kaia finally let go of her hand, Claire found herself slightly out of breath, her hair plastered to her face from the wind. She swiped it from her face and looked at Kaia, who barely looked tired despite sprinting. Now that they had stopped, Claire finally got a good look at the view.

The lake stretched out before them, glimmering an iridescent blue that made Claire feel cold just looking at it. The only house in view was Jody’s, which resided to the left of them on top of a low slope. Pine and deciduous trees surrounded them at all sides, clustered in an especially dense speckle on the side of the lake directly across from them. Though it was beautiful, there was something about it that made her feel uneasy added with the fact that she didn’t remember this natural landscape in Jody’s backyard. Could these angels – or Kaia, apparently – have altered her memory so drastically that she had different memories of where she lived? And if so, how much of the life she still remembered was real, then? She decided that she didn’t want to think about it, not wanting to fall down into a rabbit hole, though the swirl of cold dark feelings when she looked at the landscape didn’t disappear.

Meanwhile, storm clouds were gathering above them in a gray huddle, and Claire caught a faint whiff of ozone in the air. She shivered and wrapped one arm around herself.

“We have to go there,” Kaia was saying, pointing at the center of the lake. Claire could see the circular area in the middle where the colour of the lake took on an opalescent sheen despite the cloudy weather. It almost glowed in the dimness, and Claire was amazed that she hadn’t noticed the spot until Kaia identified it. Then again, everything around her was out of place, and she was too busy taking in the uncanny landscape to even see anything else about it.

Kaia was getting into the small rowboat that was leaning against the shore. Claire paused for a second and looked back at the house to see that Patience was nowhere in sight.

“Come on,” Kaia prompted. “Push the boat in.”

“Yeah,” Claire said in an exhale and took a second to resolve herself before she pushed the boat into the water and then climbed onto the other seat. The boat swayed for a second, groaning in protest at the weight and Claire was almost certain the little rowboat would capsize before it righted itself again. She wasn’t sure why but something about the water made her feel ill. She wasn’t sure how to describe it, but it felt invasive and familiar all at once, and not for the first time she wished that she had all her memories intact so she could figure out the puzzle.

Kaia handed her one set of oars and she helped row the boat to the middle of the lake, her hands growing more shakier the closer they got to the middle. A part of Claire imagined that this would be romantic in any other circumstance: her and Kaia taking a boat ride across the lake on a sunny morning, but her instinct said otherwise, telling her to turn back and go back inside of the house and never look at the lake again, even though Kaia was sitting across from her with an equally resolute expression. She swallowed down her fears and continued to row the battered boat, wondering in the back of her mind if Patience was right that Kaia was dangerous. She discarded that thought immediately, scolding herself for thinking that.

The first drops of rain landed on her arms softly like tears before the onslaught followed. Within a moment, the sky was pouring down on them, soaking both Claire and Kaia to the core. Claire started shivering, though Kaia looked completely unaffected with the curls of her hair dampened by the rain and sticking to her face.

“Right here,” Kaia said, pulling her own oars from the water. She turned to look at Claire now, her eyes more determined than Claire had ever seen, even back when Kaia agreed to enter the Bad Place to help Claire. “We have to jump in.”

Claire physically recoiled at her words, nearly dropping her oars into the water. She wasn’t sure why the thought was making her cower, but she was freezing, and the rain didn’t show any signs of stopping with the clouds growing so dark that it felt like it was night. The water had lost its shimmery blue quality and looked just like regular lake water, but Claire could still feel it churning under the boat. It was unnatural, and she couldn’t explain why she felt that way, but she knew that didn’t want to go in there. She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said.

“Trust me,” Kaia pleaded. “I just… I know there’s something down there, and I can’t do it on my own.”

She wanted to refuse again, but it felt like a mirror of what happened when Claire asked Kaia to enter the Bad Place outside of her dreams. She had been terrified and Claire had convinced Kaia to come with her. Now the roles were reversed.

Before Claire could give Kaia an answer, she felt an invisible force hit her hard in the chest and she lost balance, dropping one of the oars into the water and tipping over backwards with a yelp. Kaia shouted her name and shot forward, but Claire was already falling into the abyssal waters.

Her head plunged into the icy water first, and she screamed only to get a lungful of water. She moved her arms and legs in an attempt to tread water, but it was like moving through mud, and she could only helplessly sink deeper into the lake. Though she was already soaked by the rain from earlier, the water was even colder, pulling away the heat from her body until her muscles felt lethargic even though her she was trying to move them with all her might. She thought she could hear Kaia above her yelling her name, but it was like trying to listen through static; her voice got further and further away, fading in and out of focus.

Claire’s body was frozen, and she could barely move. The only sound that she could hear now was the slow pounding of her heart, reminding her of her own lifeforce. There was nothing but darkness, and Claire wondered if this was what dying felt like. It was like being an angel’s vessel, strangely. Back when she was no more than twelve years old and Castiel had asked to borrow her body, his monotone voice the only thing she could sense during the whole ordeal. Castiel was different now, but she could never forget it, the feeling of being trapped in her own body in pure darkness.

But then she heard a voice breaking into her consciousness. And it wasn’t Kaia. She struggled to move, reaching towards the voice until she could make out the words.

“Wake up.” The echo was growing louder, and it sounded like more than just Kaia’s voice. For one second an image flickered in the darkness – there was someone standing over her. “Claire,” the voice repeated, and there was another image swimming into view now, merging with darkness of the lake.

Claire blinked a few times, trying to get the fuzzy image into focus. She heard her name being called again, and she reached out with more vigour towards the other person. The second image was coming into clearer focus now. And…she wasn’t sinking helplessly into the lake, and she was no longer completely soaked, but her body still felt extremely lethargic, and her hands… She twitched them and realized that they were tied into fists above her head. She was dangling a few inches off the ground, hung up with nothing but her bound wrists.

Someone was saying her name again, and when Claire opened her eyes again, she saw Jody Mills standing in front of her. She was shining a flashlight in front of Claire’s face and she squinted, her eyes sensitive to the illumination. She opened her mouth to say something, but her throat felt incredibly parched and she ended up dry coughing. The ropes around her hands loosened momentarily and she dropped down and hit her head against the cement floor, groaning in pain. Her wrists burned.

She heard the telltale scuffle of a fight going on in the distance and someone was yelling Jody’s and Claire’s name, though Claire could barely gather the energy to stay conscious. She felt someone grab her, pushing her on her back and holding her in a chokehold. She gasped, kicking weakly at her attacker, a bald woman, skin blue with tattoos who was raising her hand up to Claire’s face. Looking at her blearily, Claire started to piece it together: the flash of blue light she remembered didn’t come from angels, like everyone had told her. It came from the djinn she was hunting.

“Claire!” someone shouted. Donna maybe, but she wasn’t sure. She heard the sound of metal screeching across the cement floor and she turned her head slightly to see a knife sliding beside her. Claire reached out for the knife, barely grasping onto the hilt and then she brought it up and stabbed it through the side of the djinn’s head, pushing hard and feeling the blade’s resistance against the djinn’s skull before it smashed through. Blood splattered onto Claire’s face, and she flinched back, almost losing her grip on the knife. The djinn let out an ungodly screech that was quickly cut off when Claire used the last of her strength to pull the knife out and aim it at the djinn’s neck, cutting through the tendons. She felt the grip on her throat loosened when the djinn slumped over to the side, and Claire let go out the knife she was holding, feeling all the adrenaline leave her in a swift rush, and she was plunged back into the darkness of the lake water once again.


	2. Act Two

ACT TWO

The Angel’s Dilemma

i.

Claire opened her eyes to see a fuzzy image of Donna Hanscum’s smiling face in the sunlight.

“Hiya, kid,” she greeted cheerily.

“Where am I?” Claire asked, blinking until her vision cleared. Her throat still felt dry and she coughed, turning her head to the side.

“Don’t strain yourself. You’re in the Sioux Fall hospital right now – that djinn really did a number on you, huh?” Donna said with a grin.

“Cue the déjà vu,” Claire mumbled quietly to herself.

“Anywho, I got two options for you: you can either stay here and relax until you’re all better or we can leave now and go to Biggerson’s for burgers.”

“Do you even have to ask?” Claire said, pushing herself out of bed even though her muscles protested.

“Burgers it is then,” Donna said, helping to support Claire off of the bed.

After they had checked out – much to the nurse’s dismay – they were now sitting in Biggersons waiting for their orders to come in. Claire still felt like she had been dragged through hell and back, and she was grateful that Donna was talking about other things instead of asking her about the djinn, though she knew there was only so long she could stall when Donna gave her the serious face after the waitress left.

“So why did you do it?” she asked.

Claire avoided her eyes, carefully picking at a string at the hem of the shirt that Donna had let her borrow. “Do what?”

“The djinn you went after,” Donna said without losing patience. “Why did you go after something so powerful without backup?”

Claire didn’t know what to say, and she was half certain that Jody and Donna were going to play bad cop good cop with her until she spilled the beans. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Claire said, hoping that Donna would let her avoid it this one time. She didn’t want to think about the djinn dream any more than she had to, and her memories – her _real_ ones, were all starting to come back to her. Looking back at it, even she could say what she did was pretty thoughtless. She winced when she thought about Jody’s impending lecture and even worse – explaining why she did it.

Donna grimaced, but thankfully she didn’t press Claire any further about it. Instead, she changed the conversation by bringing up a new case she was looking into that sounded like a solo vampire, and Claire was all too happy to listen and offer her own ideas until the food came.

It was only in the middle of Claire chowing down some fries like she hadn’t eaten in days that Donna brought up the topic of the djinn again. “You were looking for a way to open the Rift, weren’t you?”

Claire nearly choked and had to down half a glass of water before she was able to talk. “How did you know?” She looked at Donna, who was looking thoughtfully at Claire like she hadn’t just kicked open the lock to Claire’s secrets.

“This,” she said, reaching into her bag and pulling out Claire’s leather-bound journal. She slid it gently across the table, and Claire stared accusingly at the journal. It was unassuming: facedown and clasped shut at the side, but Claire knew that everyone must have read everything inside it now: from her opening sentence to her documentation of research she was doing on the Rift. She’d left it at home when she set off for what she thought would be a quick and easy hunt, and now her bad decisions were coming back to haunt her.

Claire picked up the journal and laid it on her lap, so it would sit out of sight. It was a hunting journal, not a diary, she reminded herself. But it did feel like a diary when she started it, and she couldn’t help the feeling of embarrassment that flooded her. “Yeah, what about it?” Claire asked, mustering all the carelessness that she could.

“Jody wasn’t happy about it, but I think we both understood,” Donna told her, taking a bite out of her burger.

“Understand what?” Claire asked sharply.

Donna sighed, putting her burger down on the plate. “Claire, we’re not stupid. We knew how you felt about her, and what you went through… It was horrific.”

Traumatic would be the word Claire would aim for, especially considering the fact that she kept having dreams about being in the Bad Place with Kaia. But there was something else Donna said that bothered her: “How I felt about her?” she repeated.

Donna gave her a sad kind of smile, and Claire felt irritated in an instant. She didn’t want to be anyone’s pity project, but her anger faded when Donna spoke. “We’ve all had our tragedies, right? You live with it, and you learn how to fight another day.” She was grinning now, and Claire thought she was seeing a seldom kind of pain in her expression for a brief moment before she switched back to positive cheerfulness. “Anywho, let’s get you headed back home.”

 

ii.

Jody was pacing in front of the kitchen table while Claire waited, leaning back casually in her seat. She glanced over at Patience who was also sitting at the table, her pencil moving over what appeared to be school work, though she wasn’t fooling anyone. Claire was tempted to tell Jody that she had all day, but she figured the sarcasm wouldn’t bode well at the moment.

“What were you even thinking?” Jody finally said, staring down at Claire like she was trying to will her into being permanently glued to this seat and never hunt again. Claire shrugged much, and Jody exhaled in frustration. “You were chasing after a djinn so you could what? Open the Rift?” When Claire didn’t answer, Jody continued. “We would have no idea where you’d gone if Patience hadn’t found your journal.” Patience winced at the admission and looked up to mouth _sorry_ to Claire.

Claire huffed and rolled her eyes, crossing her arms around her chest, but her thoughts were racing back to the djinn dream she’d be stuck in just a few hours ago. The djinn somehow had been powerful enough to mindwipe her into the illusion, and Claire herself had been sloppy enough to get caught. The strange lake by the house, the angel case – that had all been one giant hallucination cooked up by a hungry djinn.

And Kaia…

Her chest ached with a hollow pain, and she tried not to think about Kaia in the djinn world too hard.

She remembered more now: she had been looking for something that would help her find the thing that killed Kaia, and the first step had been to locate another person that could open up the Rift. When she first started, she had looked online for dreamwalkers and found the forum that Kaia used to frequent, though everyone insisted that opening a portal to one of the other worlds was impossible. Not only that, but she immediately left the site when she did enough thorough digging to find Kaia’s old posts on the forum asking for help with her powers. Reading Kaia’s pleas were excruciating and left her emotionally exhausted and in tears.

Claire had tried to contact the Winchesters next, but Sam wasn’t answering his phone and Dean’s phone always went immediately to voicemail. She texted Castiel a few times only to get one response back from him a few days later: _It’s dangerous right now. Don’t try to find us._ There was thumbs down and a frowning cat emoji at the end, like the message itself wasn’t clear enough for an angel of the Lord.

That left Claire to grasp for straws. For the next month it had been monster case after monster case with a side of research. It was only recently that Claire thought she might have stumbled on a lead with the djinn that had been feeding on people in a nearby town. She booked it without a second word in hopes of capturing the djinn and threatening it to open up a portal. The chance that it would work out the way she wanted it was slim, and she had no idea what she would do after she made it into the Bad Place, but all the time she spent doing nothing had made her desperate and stupid, and it led her right into the monster’s trap.

After the events of the night she awoke in the warehouse, she was pretty sure she couldn’t use that particular djinn anymore.

“Whatever,” Claire mumbled. “It was an accident.”

“You could have died,” Jody said, emphasizing the last word hard even though this wasn’t Claire’s first run-in with near death. If she had to pick her worse moment, it had to be the time she turned into a werewolf nearly two years ago. It was a miracle Jody hadn’t learned of that incident yet. “And what’s this whole business with opening the Rift?”

Claire cursed at herself internally for being so fastidious with her journal. It wasn’t like she didn’t expect anyone to read it, but it was personal at the same time. Maybe she just wasn’t very good at this journal keeping business yet. It also didn’t help that her first page was a revenge promise for Kaia.

She bit her lip at the thought of Kaia, trying not to think about the Kaia in the djinn world. She wasn’t sure how it captured her likeness so clearly and arrange her so perfectly that she didn’t stop to think for a second that Kaia wasn’t real, that she was dead like her instinct screamed the minute they met in that world. The djinn struck her at her weakest, and she was ashamed for falling prey so easily. She had been roped into fake Kaia’s quest for… whatever she was looking for, and it completely distracted Claire from figuring out that she was already ensnared.

“It’s nothing,” Claire said with a shrug. She pushed her chair back and stood up. “I’m going to my room.”

“No, you are not, young lady,” Jody said, standing in her way with her hands on her hips. The ferocious look in Jody’s eyes made Claire avert her eyes. She sighed heavily, leaning a hand against the table to support her weight.

“Look, I know it was dangerous, but now I’m fine,” Claire said. “Can I go now?”

“No,” Jody said. “What you did was extremely risky, and you should have told someone beforehand!”

“Why?” Claire asked, putting a bite into her words. “So you could stop me from going?” She hated being treated like a kid. She was twenty-one for god’s sake, and she knew how to handle her own crap.

“Have you ever hunted a djinn before?” Jody demanded.

Claire forced herself to pause before she spoke, trying to gauge at the angle that Jody was coming from. “No, but why does it matter?”

“It matters because you went in with no backup whatsoever and expected to capture the thing and also to open up a Rift into another world. And how exactly did you plan to proceed from there?”

“I’d burn that bridge when I got to it,” Claire argued, knowing on some level that what she did was stupid, but she certainly didn’t need Jody of all people to tell her that. “I just wanted to do something,” Claire continued. “It’s been months since –” She deflated, falling silent and she realized that she didn’t want to say the words out loud. The whole topic was taboo ever since Kaia died all those months ago, and no one had said a thing about it to Claire since. Maybe they feared that Claire would snap, or maybe they just wanted to give her time and space to move on. Whatever the case, Claire was grateful for the small reprieve. She didn’t need to be constantly reminded of her failure by others as well as herself. But now that they had read the journal, she feared that their vow of silence would soon be coming to an end.

“I know how you feel,” Jody replied, her voice gentler now. “But you need to understand that this revenge business? Isn’t going to get you what you want.”

“I’m not trying to bring her back,” Claire protested, but Jody kept talking.

“And what are you going to do after you kill the monster? Because it’s not going to give you the closure that you’re looking for. Revenge isn’t going to make you feel any better, trust me.”

There was that flair of anger starting in her chest again, and she gritted her teeth. “You think I’m broken,” she stated, her voice disconcertingly calm to her own ears. “You think that after what happened, after I _failed_ Kaia, that a part of me was broken inside.”

“Nobody is saying that,” Jody opposed, but Claire wasn’t listening anymore.

“Well I’m _not_ broken. And I’m going to get to the bottom of this and find her killer, whether you like it or not,” she promised, moving past Jody and heading directly towards her room. She was half expecting Jody to apprehend her, and she was relieved when she reached her room without a problem. Slamming the door behind her, she took in the sight of her room exactly as she’d left it the morning she left to hunt the djinn: her bed was messy and unmade and there were newspaper clippings scattered all over her bedside table. There was a bed on the other side of the room, and she stared for a second before she remembered that she was sharing a room with Patience.

She exhaled, slumping against the door now that the anger had fled and left her drained. She knew that Jody was only worried about her, and that storming off was childish, but she couldn’t stop thinking about seeing Kaia in that other world.

It was so real; she had honestly believed that Kaia was somehow back from the dead. Now she was awake in this reality again where the only thing getting her through the listless days was her vow of vengeance.

There was no point in moping about it, she thought. She picked herself up off the ground and sat down on her bed, pulling out her journal from the inside of her jean jacket. She opened it and flipped through, exhaling in relief when she didn’t see all those cryptic angel names. Though it was all a djinn dream, it was eerie and she felt a chill down her spine when she thought about it.

She turned toward the latter half of what she had written in her journal, notes after notes of research flying past her vision. After all this work, she couldn’t stop hunting for the thing, even if it wasn’t going to give her the closure she needed. Besides, Kaia’s murderer was dangerous, and if Claire didn’t put it out of its misery then there was a chance that someone else could fall victim. Looking through her journal, she realized once again what a desperate gamble the djinn was. All her mythology research had ended in zilch for what it was worth, and the djinn was the closest she ever got. Now she was back at square one. She resisted the urge to rip up the pages of her journal.

The knocking on the door brought Claire back to reality, and she thought it was Kaia for one second before she caught herself. Kaia was dead, she scolded herself, and there was no way that she would ever be coming back from that. She knew there was a viable option immediately to her right: demon deals, but she couldn’t shake the urgent look on Dean Winchester’s face out of her mind, and also couldn’t forget the brief glimpse into Castiel’s memories when he took over her body years ago. Some part of her recalled what fighting through hell felt like, even if she couldn’t put words to it, but she could feel her own twelve-year old terror merging with Castiel’s resolve to find someone.

She turned around to see Patience entering the room and then leaning against the closed door with the back of her palms. Claire noticed that she seemed nervous, and Claire would be lying if she said she didn’t feel a bit wary around her too. Ever since the djinn dream, she couldn’t look at Patience without hearing her warning about Kaia in the djinn world, even though the real Patience never said that. And now that she knew that it was all a hallucination, she felt stupid that she couldn’t figure out that the Patience the djinn had conjured up was nothing more than a poor imitation of the real one. She simply hadn’t spent that much time around the new girl to learn her quirks.

“Hey,” Claire ended up saying, more of a cautionary greeting than a welcome.

“Hi,” Patience returned in the same tone. “You know, you should be nicer to Jody.”

Claire gave her a dry look that she hoped told Patience that she had zero interest in that conversation. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Patience raised her hands in the air. “I don’t know, I’m still new around here, and I’m trying to figure things out and…” She took a deep breath and exhaled before she looked at Claire again, biting down her bottom lip, her eyes darting around the room like she was double-checking to make sure it was empty. “Look, if it makes you feel any better… I had a vision.” She wavered on the last word, knowing that the last time she spoke about her vision, it was supposedly about Claire dying. Lot of good that did.

“Well? Hit me with the bad news,” Claire told her. “When should I plan my funeral?”

She knew she was being unfair to Patience – the girl had never asked for psychic powers in the first place, or to be thrown in this mess, but she wasn’t deterred by Claire’s comment. “It’s about the thing you’re hunting. I think you found a lead.” That got Claire’s attention. She sat up straighter, turning her body slightly towards Patience.

“What was it?” she asked.

“I saw you in a town,” Patience continued carefully, her voice low. “Monroe City, Missouri.”

Claire thought for a second, mentally going through her research. “Doesn’t ring any bells.”

Patience grimaced, and Claire waited for her to say something snarky so she could retaliate but Patience only shrugged. “That’s what I saw,” she stated firmly, turning around to leave. “Do whatever you want with it.”

Only when the door clicked close did Claire immediately pull out her laptop. She waited for her internet browser to load before she typed the name in the search bar. It was a shot in the dark, and Patience’s visions had proven to be wrong once, but Claire would be damned if she didn’t grab the puzzle piece she was offered.

After a few minutes of searching through online newspapers, she finally found what she was looking for. A cold feeling started to spread in the pit of her stomach as she stared at her screen.

Right on the headlines of an article dating back weeks ago was the name Sister Jo.

 

iii.

Claire was almost done packing when the door swung open. She froze, in the midst of shoving her angel sword in her bag, only to relax when she noticed it was just Alex. Alex leaned against the doorframe of her room with her lips pursed and arms crossed around her chest while she surveyed the room. Claire’s clothes were scattered all over the floor, and her bed was practically overturned from looking for her lockpicks.

“Don’t say it,” Claire warned.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Alex said, sauntering into the room. She nodded at the pile where most of Claire’s clothes were gathering. “Is this your latest fashion project?”

“Very funny,” Claire grumbled, picking some of the clothes off the ground to shove into the empty drawer in her cabinet. She _was_ going to organize them again. After the case, that is. “But no. I’ve been following a lead that Patience gave me yesterday.” She figured that coming clean to Alex wouldn’t hurt if she got into trouble again.

Alex gave her a skeptical look, raising one eyebrow. “So, you’re really going down that lane even after what Jody said? Especially after the whole djinn mess? Do you even know how much blood you lost after that whole incident? It was a nightmare trying to come up with a plausible explanation for the doctors.”

Claire scowled. “Don't lecture me on what I should and shouldn’t do,” she told her. “Besides, even if it doesn’t work out, it’s still a case.” She took out her phone from her back pocket and opened the browser she had left it on. “’Local woman claims that miracle healer Sister Jo cured her of blindness’,” she read out loud. “Fake or not, there’s something fishy going on with all these reports.”

She tried to make it sound casual like she was just going on a whim, but a chill went straight down her back when she said that name aloud. Initially she had chalked it up to the djinn accessing her memories of Castiel and inserting some made-up names to incense her into hunting for a monster within that world to keep her distracted. Now that she knew Sister Jo was a real person with possibly real abilities, she wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Alex grimaced like she was trying not to make her irritation too obvious. “Don’t you ever want to go to school?”

Claire paused for a second. Then she rolled her eyes at Alex though her heart was still pounding in her chest, her mind racing back to what Patience told her – no, not Patience, the djinn version of Patience in that fake world. “We’ve been through this conversation a million times before.”

“No, we haven’t,” Alex denied, and Claire let herself relax at the fact that Alex didn’t notice her sudden moment of panic. “I know you have your reasons, but why do you insist on –”

“Being a freak?” she cut in dryly. Alex looked taken aback and honestly Claire wasn’t sure why she said that. They hadn’t fought like this in a long time, and she didn’t know what prompted her try to aggravate Alex. She sighed, picking up more clothes from the floor to put away.

“Are you looking for a fight right now? Because I’m going to be real with you and tell you ahead of time that I don’t have the energy for this,” Alex told her.

“I’m sorry,” Claire said, though she knew the apology was too blunt to pass off as sincere. “I’m just stressed out, okay? Don’t take it personally.” She slung her backpack over her shoulder and took a step towards the door only for Alex to stand up straight and block off her entry. Claire rolled her eyes. “What do you want to talk about, Alex?”

“Hmm, let me think. Maybe your recklessness or your obsession with Kaia?”

Claire froze. To hear Kaia’s name spoken aloud so evenly after so many months of hopeless searching for revenge…after the _djinn dream_. Her hands trembled, and she clenched her fists to still them. “I’m not obsessed,” she finally said, hating the way her voice came off shaky.

“You’re not convincing anyone,” Alex said. After a few moments of silence, she sighed and shook her head. “I’m not going to try and stop you from going on your goose chase, but at least go with a hunting partner.”

“Are you offering?”

“Me? No,” Alex scoffed. “I’m leaving for my shift at the hospital. But if you talk to Jody –”

“No,” Claire deadpanned.

“Fine,” Alex said, uncrossing her arms and taking a step away from the door. “It’s your choice, but I’m just saying.” Alex gave her an I Tried half-smile before she left.

Claire could have continued on leaving like she planned to do, but Alex always had a way of getting under her skin after all these years. She bit back her own inner protests and headed down into the dining room where, to her surprise, Jody, Donna and Patience were all awake and eating breakfast.

“Morning,” Donna greeted.

“Yeah. Hi,” Claire replied, taking a seat beside Donna. “So Jody,” she began, hoping to cut the chase.

“I already know,” she interrupted plainly. Claire couldn’t help feeling the frostiness between them and she wished that she could apologize for blowing up last night, but when Jody met her eyes, she was smiling, albeit a sad one. “You’re heading to Monroe City?”

Patience ducked her head down, and Claire knew that she must have told them when she woke up in the morning and saw Claire packing away her stuff. Or maybe she told them last night, and they were all here waiting for her to arrive. It explained why Donna was still in town. Still, Claire couldn’t muster the effort to be mad that Patience gave her game away. “Yeah,” Claire confirmed. “I should be back in a few days. It wouldn’t suck if someone came with me.” She tried to sound nonchalant about it, but she was wincing on the inside.

“I will,” Patience offered immediately, and Claire tried not to show her displeasure immediately. It wasn’t like she disliked Patience – it was that Patience was still a newbie hunter, and she wasn’t sure if she could handle tutoring her if something went wrong in a blink of an eye.

Though before she could protest, Donna was already extending her help. “I’m off for another week. How about I head down there with you girls and we check the case out?”

The team was a little bigger than Claire would have liked it, but she was glad to have Donna and her arsenal of weapons on her side. “Sounds good,” she said, pushing up from her seat. “I’m ready when you are.” Instead of waiting around, she went out the front door and decided to pace outside in the sunlight.

After all night of researching on Sister Jo, she was certain that this was who she was looking for in Monroe City. Sure, there was another sketchy article about an upscale businessman getting his heart ripped out in an alleyway nearly a month ago, but the lack of similar activity after that told her that somebody had probably taken care of it. At least, she hoped that was the case, because she was more interested in investigating this Sister Jo character and getting to the bottom of why that name showed up in the djinn world.

Just when she was getting jittery from all the waiting, Donna and Patience emerged from the front door, with Patience dragging a full gym bag, probably full of a change of clothes. Claire forced herself not to comment on it as she reached for the passenger seat of the car, only for Patience to reach for the same door. They stared at each other for a second before Patience let go without a word and took the back seat.

Claire slid into her seat and looked out the window. For a moment, she half expected to see a luminescent lake sitting in the backdrop of Jody’s house before she shook herself out it. That was a djinn dream, she told herself. It wasn’t real, and Kaia is dead. Get over yourself.

“It’s around an eight-hour drive,” Donna informed them, starting up the car. “I hope you’re all ready.”

“Will we be taking a bathroom stop?” Patience asked, earning her a grimace from Claire.

“We’ll be stopping halfway to refuel this baby up. Otherwise, just give me the word when you need one,” Donna informed her, and Patience nodded in relief.

With that note, Donna pulled out of the driveway and Claire watched Jody’s house grow further and further away until it was out of sight. It had been a while since Claire was in a long haul with other people, and it made her uncomfortable. She plugged in her headphones and leaned her head against the window, closing her eyes for a nap.

After just recovering from the djinn attack, she was still feeling achingly tired down to the bone, though she was determined to keep looking for answers. The thing that killed Kaia had to be put down, and with each day, Claire was growing more hopeless that she would ever find it. Her perfectly laid out plans to capture the djinn had gone awry, and now she was chasing a new lead, this time under Patience’s advice. She could only hope that it would prove to be useful.

She didn’t notice that she had fallen asleep until she felt someone gently shaking her awake. She pulled off her headphones and looked up to see Donna. “Rise and shine,” she said. “We’re making a pit stop.” She glanced out the window to see that they had stopped at a gas station, and when she got out of the car, she noticed that the sun was making its journey into a late afternoon sunset. They had been driving for hours.

She took a bathroom break and then headed into the convenience store of the gas station, already seeing Patience there looking through the shelves of snacks. “You getting something for me too? I like it sweet.” Claire told her.

“Didn’t take you for a fan of gummy bears,” Patience said, picking up a pack and tossing it to her.

“I like to keep my image fresh,” Claire replied, catching the package.

“Why are you acting so uneasy around me?” Patience asked her before Claire could leave to pay. She was looking at Claire now, and she was reminded of the time in the djinn dream when Patience told her to go easy on Kaia. Claire shoved the thought away the moment it came.

“What are you talking about?” she said in an attempt to avoid the topic.

“It’s uncomfortable,” Patience admitted. “Was it something I did? Is it about back when, you know, the first vision? Because I swear to god Claire I didn’t know –”

“It’s fine,” Claire told her. She didn’t want to think about the first vision: how Claire was supposed to die but Kaia took the bullet for her instead.

But Patience wasn’t having it. She shook her head. “Claire, what I saw – it was a mistake.”

“What?”

Patience looked nearly green at the thought, but she continued speaking. “I thought I saw you die. But that wasn’t it. I saw you mourning. And I thought you were dead.”

Claire was at a loss for words. “So you’re saying that your vision came true the way it did. That I was never supposed to die and that –” That Kaia was supposed to die all along.

Patience backed up, and Claire was aware that she had walked several paces closer to her before she stopped herself. “I didn’t know, Claire. I swear I would have said something.”

It was so easy to get angry now. It was so easy to pin all the blame onto Patience, the new girl, the psychic, the one who made a mistake in identifying the truth. It was easy to forget all the complications and focus all her anger and hatred, and all the dark feelings stirring within her right onto Patience.

But she knew that wouldn’t be fair to Patience or to Kaia. She was on a search for Kaia’s murderer, not someone to hurl all her anger onto. She forced herself to take a breath in and calm down before she spoke. “What happened, happened,” she said, controlling her even tone. “Here, give me your chips.”

Patience looked half-terrified, but she handed them over tentatively like she thought Claire was going to bite her hand off.

“They’re on me today,” Claire said. “And whatever happens with the visions, don’t blame yourself for it.”

Patience still looked wary, but she nodded after a second. “Okay,” she said. Claire gave her a half-smile, and she returned it hesitantly before she walked out the door, and Claire thought that maybe the new girl wasn’t so bad to be around after all.

Claire headed towards the cash register, but she felt a sudden chill down her neck like somebody was watching her. She glanced behind her to see the only other person in the convenience store grabbing drinks in the fridge. She shook off the feeling with a frown and paid for the snacks, quickly leaving the store. Though even as she got into the car and Donna began to drive, she could still feel like a pair of eyes were watching her the entire time.

When they finally arrived in Monroe City hours later, it was nearly midnight. There were a few people milling around here and there, especially near the pub, but otherwise it was quiet. Claire directed Donna through the streets to where the church was located. Her hopes of finding Sister Jo immediately were dashed when she saw that the lights were out.

“Why don’t we check in for the night and then come back in the morning?” Donna suggested, and Claire reluctantly agreed. There wasn’t anything they could do if nobody was inside.

They drove around until they found a motel ten minutes from the church and settled in for the night, with Claire sharing a queen-sized bed with Patience. Claire listened to Donna and Patience’s snores, wishing that the day would come sooner. The closer they had gotten to Monroe City, the more Claire’s chest burned, like something inside was physically trying to reach out for something. She didn’t know why she felt this way, only that it was unfamiliar and strange, and Claire could barely sleep with the feeling urging her on.

Eventually, Claire collapsed into her side of the bed, exhaustion having worn her out, and she fell into a deep sleep absent from thoughts of the Bad Place.

 

iv.

The man who opened the doors to the church after Claire’s incessant pounding was not a pastor, and nor did he look happy to see the three of them.

“You looking for Sister Jo?” he asked, and Claire barely had time to dig into her pocket for her fake badge before he answered his own question. “Her services are closed. Permanently.”

“What do you mean?” Donna implored, looking official decked in her sheriff’s uniform. Claire felt a little underwhelming next to her, and she vowed to buy herself a nicer blazer the next time she had a chance so she could play the part better. Besides, it would be a good addition to the closet.

“It means that she’s permanently closed,” he repeated, moving to close the door. Claire stuck her foot in the space to stop him, leaning her hand against the doorframe.

“Where is she now?” Claire demanded. “Because she’s involved in a very serious investigation right now.” She tried to make it sound threatening, lowering her voice.

He wasn’t impressed. “I’m not surprised,” he scoffed with a twist of his mouth. “Scam artist, right? Unfortunately, I have no idea where she went, and I’d prefer to never hear about her again. Good luck, officers.” With that, he slammed the door and nearly took some of Claire’s fingers.

“Lot of good that did,” Claire mumbled.

“Well girls, then it’s off to the county records now,” Donna told them.

“At least we know she’s not working as a faith healer anymore,” Patience said. Then her entire body froze, her eyes growing glassy for a brief second. She quickly pulled herself out of it, shaking her head, and Claire guessed that she had just seen a vision.

Patience grabbed onto Claire’s arm. “There’s a cabin just north of the city,” she said. “There’s a woman inside… And she’s in danger. We have to go now.”

“Sister Jo?” Claire asked, but Patience shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Only that we need to go, now.”

Her tone was commandeering enough, though Claire would have liked to snoop around in the county records for Sister Jo. Even so, Claire could tell that Patience wasn’t joking around, and while she hadn’t been right about the vision of Claire dying, she was right about sensing when someone was in danger, and Claire definitely wasn’t going to put her search over helping someone.

Patience took the passenger’s seat this time while Claire took the back, and she gave Donna instructions on which roads to take. Claire’s hand tightened on the serrated knife she had brought along for her trip. Patience hadn’t told her what monsters were waiting for them, and she hoped close combat wouldn’t put her in a bad position, and the angel sword was hard to wield so she saved it either for dire situations or a quick solo kill.

The road was enclosed by trees on either side after a while of driving north on rocky gravel path off the main road. Up ahead, Claire thought that she could see an outline of a cabin with the lights on even in the late morning. Though it was unnervingly silent, and Claire felt that feeling from the convenience store again: like somebody was watching her.

Donna parked nearby, and they quickly got out to grab weapons, with Donna and Patience favouring firearms.

“I’m going ahead first to scan the perimeter,” Donna told them. “Stay low.”

Claire ducked behind a pair of trees while Patience hid low in the bushes. After a few minutes, Donna came back in sight and gave them an okay, and Claire emerged from the shadows. She glanced over at Patience who looked a little queasy.

“You okay?” she asked her.

“Peachy,” Patience replied with a wobbly bravado. “Let’s just get in there.”

On a count of three, Donna kicked down the front door, and all three of them brandished their weapons, expecting to be greeted with a horde of monsters. Instead, there was a lone woman sitting in a wooden chair in the middle of an empty room. She was tied up from shoulder to her waist, but she didn’t look too bothered by it.

“Well, hello girls,” the woman said with an all too easy smile for someone who was tied to a chair. “Am I glad to see you.”

“I thought you said she was in trouble,” Claire heard Donna ask Patience.

“She is! I saw… I saw…” But Patience didn’t look too sure now.

“Oh, she is definitely in trouble,” a voice leered, and Claire jumped backwards into the room as a man manifested behind her, his eyes flicking black for a second. She didn’t have any time to gauge her options and the demon opened his mouth, and a whirl of black smoke headed straight towards Patience, his old body slumping onto the ground unconscious or dead, Claire didn’t know.

“No!” Claire yelled, and it was like she was twelve all over again, and she was watching her mother getting possessed by a demon. Patience looked at her, eyes entirely black like the pupils of her eyes had stretched across the entire surface. She grinned unnaturally wide, immediately holding up the gun and aiming it at Claire, and Claire froze up.

Donna tackled Patience, knocking her to side, and the shot went wildly off course. “Free her!” Donna yelled at Claire, indicating to the woman that was tied to the chair. She shot on her feet over to the woman and began to saw away at the thick ropes that were holding her to the chair. For someone who had just watched a demon possession, she seemed unnaturally curious of what was going on, watching Donna and Patience – no, the _demon’s_ struggle with something akin to amusement.

“So that’s what demon possession looks like,” she commented, and Claire held back a response and continued to saw through the next ropes after the first few had snapped. There were strange indecipherable symbols like they were burned on the ropes, she noted. The symbols glowed with a faint sort of power when Claire cut through them, flashing and then turning completely dark. She hoped that it was a good sign.

She was almost through when she heard a loud crack, and she looked over to see that Donna had knocked Patience out with the butt of her gun. She was ready to feel relieved until she remembered that demons weren’t so easily limited. Like she expected, the black smoke flew out of Patience’s mouth and went back into the man who was on the floor.

It was at that moment that the last of the ropes tying the woman snapped, the symbols on the ropes all lighting up at once and then going out with a hiss. She stood up, the ropes falling around her, staring the demon down with a smile that made the demon tense up. Claire wasn’t sure why, but the pressure inside her chest that she had been feeling ever since Monroe City grew stronger, like it was resonating with something. She could hear a hollow ringing in her ears, and she slumped onto the floor in daze, the knife slipping out of her hands.

“I was never much of a warrior,” the woman said, walking towards the demon. “But what you did was unforgivable.” She was in front of the demon now, one hand grabbing tightly onto his shoulder and preventing him from running away, and the other hand lowering onto his head.

“My queen will never –,” the demon was hissing, but he cut himself off with a scream when Sister Jo’s palm touched his forehead.

Claire had known what was going to happen, she’d seen this dozens of times before but also none at all. Castiel’s memories were flitting in and out of her brain, and she blinked a few times, trying to get the images of tens of demons’ last moments out of her head. The demon was still screaming, a bright light emulating from his eyes like a fire was being lit where his eyes were, and Claire looked away, the tugging feeling in her chest splintering into pointed shards. She bent over in pain, eyes closed away from the light as she gasped, scratching at the pain. Though the agony faded quickly with the light, and Claire was left to survey the damage from the floor.

The demon was now lying with his eyes burned now, steam coming out of his empty eye sockets while Donna was on the floor to her right staring up at her in shock. Patience was sprawled unconscious on the other side, and the woman had now turned to smile at them, her auburn hair almost glowing in the morning sunlight from the doorway. Claire couldn’t deny that she was enraptured by the sight – the woman was absolutely gorgeous. But not only that, it felt like she was aglow with a warm sort of light that drew around her body. She was smartly dressed in casual attire, and for a moment, Claire felt like she was the one who had been tied up in a cabin and then freed by this woman.

“Thank you for helping me,” the woman said, cherry lips pulled into a radiant smile. “It’s only fair if I return the favour. My name is Sister Jo. Are you seeking a cure? For a loved one, perhaps?” She had addressed this to Donna, who looked confuddled by the turn of events.

“You’re the faith healer,” Claire blurted out, drawing Sister Jo’s gaze towards her. She felt like she was being pinned to the floor by her stare. “We’re looking for you.”

“I’m flattered,” she said, but then she narrowed her eyes at Claire. “You’re not an angel.”

Claire wasn’t sure what she meant, but she decided not to dwell on it too much. From her early childhood, it always felt like angels were speaking in some sort of riddle. “But you are,” she guessed, and Sister Jo affirmed it with a pleased smile. Claire felt a shudder go down her back; she’d never really liked angels, and it figured that Patience’s vision would lead her directly to one.  “What are you doing here? In the middle of backwater woods and…” She looked over at the demon lying face down outside the doorway, smoke steaming out of where his eyes would have been. She hoped the person he was possessing was already dead before Sister Jo came along.

“One bad business decision after another,” she said, waving it off. She took a few steps closer to Claire. “Though my question is, what are _you_ doing here? I thought I was sending for an angel. God knows there are only so many of us left, but I’d have expected a little more.”

Her tone wasn’t malicious, but Claire was put off. It also didn’t help that Claire had no idea what she was talking about, and she figured that there was no point in trying to understand it anyways. She was here on a mission, but now that Sister Jo was standing in front of her, she wasn’t sure how to proceed without getting her eyes burnt to a crisp. Sure, she was rude and burly with Castiel when she met him after all those years, mostly because he deserved it, but Claire had always gotten the feeling that he had changed, somehow.

“Wait a second,” Donna interrupted, looking between the both of them now that she had pushed herself to a standing position too. She held out both arms in front of the two like she was trying to gauge the situation. “Angels? And you’re an angel?”

Claire was reminded that Donna mostly specialized in vampires. She didn’t want to break the news that angels weren’t the good guys they were always depicted as in the movies, but she glanced over to see that Donna’s expression was a mixture between apprehensive and surprised, and she figured that she had already gotten the memo from somebody – probably the Winchesters, Claire’s own mind supplied.

“I guess it’s time to properly introduce myself,” Sister Jo said with a smile that didn’t halt Claire’s growing aversion. “I’m Anael, and I’m an Angel of the Lord.”

There was one detail that stuck out in her mind, something that she had forgotten about until Sister Jo – no, _Anael_ , said her name. Discomfort started brewing inside of her, but she had to ask. “So, you’re saying that Sister Jo – you’re possessing somebody?”

Anael looked down at her body like this was the first time she was noticing it, and Claire felt a familiar sense of anxiety squirm in her stomach. “I wouldn’t call it possessing,” she said, looking back up at Claire through impassive borrowed eyes. “She prayed for this.”

There was a sick feeling in Claire’s stomach that wouldn’t subside, and Claire wanted to argue with her though she didn’t know what she could say. That it was wrong? That Sister Jo – the _real_ Sister Jo, whoever she was, couldn’t have possibly known what she was getting into when she accepted an angel into her body? She remembered the fear that consumed her when she was shoved into a dark place within the confines of her own body. She remembered when Castiel’s own thoughtful hum reverberate into the darkness like a church choir: _I think I’ll be taking this vessel._ A vessel. Sister Jo was reduced to nothing more than an angel vessel, just like Claire once was.

“So you’re really an angel,” Donna mulled, giving Anael a once over and bringing Claire out of her own bottomless pit of thoughts.

Anael’s expression turned grim for the first time since they’d met her. “One of the last remaining, unfortunately,” she said with a sigh and a shake of her head, but her eyes immediately lit up like she had been hit by an idea and she turned her commanding gaze onto Claire, who fought the urge to shrink back. “Unless you can help out.”

“Me?” Claire asked. She had to remind herself of why she was here: she was looking for Sister Jo, who might be able to help her with the Rift, especially now that she had revealed to be an angel. She wasn’t here to play lapdog for whatever requests Anael might have, unless there was an equal exchange. That gave her an idea. “I’ll help you if you help me,” she said, lifting her chin up to stare Anael down.

Anael’s lips twitched upwards to one side. “A businesswoman, I like it,” she commented. “Though unfortunately, the deal has already been struck from your end and now it’s my turn to ask for a favour.”

“What are you talking about?” Claire demanded. She didn’t like the self-satisfied smirk on Anael’s face.

Sister Jo held up two fingers. “Two days ago, I felt someone’s grace reaching out to me. They were in trouble, and I sent a message to help them. I would have gone myself if I wasn’t caught in my own situation.” She motioned to the cabin they were in and shrugged, smiling apologetically. “I was sloppy after I left heaven, but thankfully the demon seemed to be stalling. It was enough time for me to gather my energy to send out another signal, but you got here before I could.”

So the djinn dream, Claire thought, with all those names – those had all supposedly come from Anael trying to awake her from the dream. And Claire – no, _someone’s grace_ , had been calling out to Anael and for some reason it had directed her straight to Claire.

“So how does this relate to Claire exactly?” Donna asked before Claire could.

“I was getting to that,” Anael said. “The thing is, I had sensed the presence of the same grace I helped out heading towards me, and I assumed that an angel was just fulfilling their part of the deal. Though imagine my surprise when it was you three and there’s not a single angel in sight. But…”

The fear in Claire’s chest was growing, but she still wasn’t sure what Anael was trying to say. She guessed that maybe in all her searching for an opening to the Rift, she had somehow stumbled onto something inexplicably angelic that tied itself onto her, though she couldn’t remember handling any relics recently, and certainly nothing angelic.

There was that djinn dream that was hyperaware of angels, Claire thought to herself, but she discarded that idea. Anael had practically claimed a hand in the angelic activity that was going on in the djinn dream, trying to use it as a signal to wake Claire up even though it did more damage than good, and she had nearly got too caught up trying to a solve a case to realize the falsity of her reality.

Anael had approached her while she was in thought, and she was now standing in front of Claire, her high heels giving her a few extra inches. There was that tugging again in her chest, like somebody had attached a string and was pulling her towards something. Though this time, Claire could definitely confirm that she was being pulled in Anael’s direction.

Before she could even begin to decipher why that was, Anael placed her cold palm on Claire’s cheek. In the background, Claire could hear Donna’s panicked yell, though there was an odd sensation of calmness that flowed through her veins. Distantly, she was aware of the blue glow of Anael’s grace flashing from her eyes, though Claire didn’t think Anael was smiting her like the demon.

And then Anael removed her hand and the calmness dissipated, leaving Claire to gasp for air, bending over and nearly collapsing onto the floor again. The tugging in her chest felt less like a jerking feeling and more like someone was trying to yank her heart out of her chest.

“What did you do?” Donna demanded while Claire coughed into the floor, trying to get some sort of air back inside of her body.

“Relax, I wasn’t going to kill her,” Anael said. “I was just trying to see if I could connect with her grace. And it turns out, I can.”

Claire finally looked up, hands holding onto the chair and leaning her weight against it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. Her insides felt like someone had succeeded in putting her through a shredder, but her brain was telling her that everything was working fine. She coughed again, trying to purge herself of that awful feeling.

“I don’t know how or why, but now’s not the time to ask questions. The fact is, Claire,” she said, despite Claire not having told her name, “that you possess angel grace.”

This was equally as bad as the werewolf incident, Claire thought. She didn’t want to have angel grace, and the thought of the presence inside of her was nauseating. It had been a very long time since she’d had angel grace inside her body, but she never wanted to experience it again, and to hear that she had grace residing in her…

“I don’t have angel grace,” Claire denied. “I’m human.”

Anael didn’t look bothered by Claire’s denial. Instead, she smiled serenely in reply. “It doesn’t change the fact that I felt it. But that doesn’t matter for now,” she dismissed. “The more important thing here is that heaven is dying, and we need your help.”

Claire took a step back, putting her hands up in front of her. “Look, I don’t know how many times I’ll have to say it but here it is again: I’m human. And also, what do I care about heaven?”

“You should care,” Anael said, eyebrows scrunching together in concern like she was worried for Claire. “It’s where human souls go in the afterlife. But even if you don’t want to help, you’re already in my debt. And trust me, this is a small favour. I just need you to come with me to heaven and after we’ve solved the issue, I’ll send you back along to your regular life. Promise.”

This wasn’t what Claire had in mind when she had taken Patience’s advice to check out Monroe City, and now she wished that she had given it a grain of salt. She was getting further and further away from her search for an opening to the Rift so she could hunt Kaia’s killer down.

But, a tiny voice inside her head said, if she could somehow finish this quickly, maybe she could enlist the help of angels to open the Rift. After all, she didn’t really have a plan in mind after she’d found the Bad Place again. She wanted to turn down Anael’s offer so badly, but what would she do after this? She had gone on a whim because she was at a stalemate, and Patience had given her a way out, and at this point, this was Claire’s best shot at reaching her goal.

Speaking of Patience… Claire glanced over to see that she was still unconscious, sprawled on the floor face-up, and she felt a pang of guilt. It was all because of Claire’s search that had gotten her into this mess, and the demon possession – Claire could only hope that the experience wasn’t too traumatizing from her, but she could probably guess that demons and angels weren’t so different when it came to possession.

“Heal my friend, and then we’ll talk,” Claire heard herself saying.

“Fair,” Anael said, walking a few steps towards Patience where she crouched over her body, hovering the palm of her hand inches in front of Patience’s face. A soft glow emulated from Anael’s hand, wisps trickling down to brush against Patience’s forehead. There was a high-pitched ringing that seemed to come from inside Claire’s head, and it faded the moment that Anael drew her hand away.

The effect was immediate: Patience gasped, opening her eyes and sitting up. “We have to go,” she said, getting up from the floor and looking at the three of them. Her eyes lingered on Anael in brief confusion before she seemed to remember sending them all on a rescue mission for her.

“Wait, Patience, you just recovered,” Claire said, wondering if she was okay after the demon possession. She didn’t like to play mother, but she knew from personal experience that it was never fun having your body become a sock puppet.

Patience shook her head. “There’s no time,” she argued. “Jody’s in trouble.” Claire felt her stomach drop, and she had to stop herself from saying _again? Another vision?_ “I saw it. Those things – they had the same black eyes –”

“Demons,” Anael supplied. “Those are demons.” She turned around to give Claire a look that she couldn’t decipher.

“Look Anael,” she said, testing the name out on her lips, “thanks for whatever you did. But a friend of ours is in trouble and we have to go now.”

She wasn’t sure what to expect – maybe for Anael to turn on her and start attacking them – but she didn’t. Instead, she put her hands on her waist and sighed, shaking her head. “You don’t understand, do you?” Anael said. “Claire, I need you to come with me for the sake of all our futures. You and your friend – even if you save them now, what’s the point if heaven is destroyed?”

Claire stopped herself from making a sharp retort. She wanted to tell Anael that she didn’t care, but there was something dangerous flashing behind Anael’s calm composure, and she had a feeling that she shouldn’t push her. Still, she had no interest in Anael’s task and frankly, she didn’t believe Anael was ever that helpful in her djinn dream to begin with.

“Claire,” Donna said, pulling Claire out of her own thoughts. “You should go with Anael.”

Her tone was carefully measured, like she didn’t want Claire to go but didn’t see any other option. “But,” Claire began, taking a step forward.

“Patience and I will head back to Sioux Falls,” Donna said. “You go with Anael. We can handle things on our own.”

Claire wanted to keep protesting, but Anael put her foot down. “That sounds like a perfect plan,” Anael said, clapping her hands together once. She gave Claire a wide smile like Claire had actually agreed to this on her own, and Anael was proud of it. “Now, my car is just parked behind the building. Shall we be off then?”

“Let her grab her stuff first,” Donna said, motioning with her to the door leading outside. “Come on, let’s get you ready for the haul.” Though she seemed to be taking it easy, Claire could hear the all too careful neutrality to her words, like she had decided this was the best decision even if she didn’t like it. Though Claire would have preferred to head back to Sioux Falls, Anael be damned, it wasn’t hard to guess that Anael wouldn’t be letting Claire slip out of her sight.

She followed behind Patience to the car, noticing the way that she glanced back at Anael like she was trying to figure her out.

“So,” Patience said lowly when Anael was out of earshot, “I’m guessing that’s Sister Jo?”

“Yes and no,” Claire muttered, kicking up the gravel in her path. She didn’t feel like going in depth, but she figured she owed Patience an explanation after the demon possession. “Her name’s Anael. She’s an angel who moonlights as Sister Jo.”

“An angel?” Patience exclaimed, and Claire winced.

“Yeah. Angels and demons are real and all that crap. But angels are just as bad as demons.” Claire shrugged. “Don’t ask for the details.”

“Okay…,” Patience said, head staring at the ground like she was trying to process it. “And the smoke –”

“That was a demon.”

“Okay,” Patience said again, dragging out syllables. “So, I was –”

“Possessed, yep. Sorry about that,” Claire apologized. She waited for Patience to freak out and demand out of this whole ordeal once again, but it didn’t come.

Instead, Patience took a deep breath and exhaled it all out. “That explains what I saw.”

Claire frowned, looking over at Patience to see that her features were pulled together in a shocked like of thoughtfulness. “What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t like how I usually have visions,” Patience explained. “My visions usually come in snapshots – and I don’t see the full picture.” Claire tried not to think about Patience’s confession about the truth behind the vision that led her to Jody’s home – that what she saw wasn’t Claire’s death, but Claire’s mourning. “But this time it was clearer, like I was behind led through someone’s memories, except that I knew it hadn’t happened yet. It was like a constant thought that was itching in my head, the entire time that demon was controlling me. I think what I saw was the demon’s thoughts.”

“So you don’t remember anything else?” Claire prompted, and Patience shook her head.

Maybe that was for the better, Claire thought. Though Claire didn’t think it was anything unusual. She didn’t like to think about when Castiel took over, but it was that way too, like Castiel couldn’t contain himself in the space he’d allocated and his grace started to spill out, reaching over and shedding light into the dark corner where he’d relegated Claire’s soul. She saw some images she didn’t understand, and people she didn’t know, but she’d absorbed it all until he’d left her body to her control again.

Suddenly, a terrible thought entered Claire’s head. Anael had been talking about Claire’s grace… What if what she was sensing was really Castiel’s grace that Claire had clung on to unknowingly?

Before she could mull on that thought a little longer, Donna was calling them over. She had Claire’s backpack, and Claire walked over to take it from her.

“Look,” Donna said when Claire slung the backpack over her shoulder, “I don’t really trust this Anael character either, but you and I both know that she’s going to be persistent.”

“Yeah,” Claire admitted, kicking at the gravel.

“And it also wouldn’t hurt to have an angel on our side,” Donna told her. “I know you’ve got your hang-ups about angels –”

“How’d you know?” Claire asked a little too sharply, though Donna didn’t seem offended.

“I saw the way you tensed up,” she told her, giving her a sympathetic smile. “But I know you’ll be able to do it.” She patted her on the shoulder. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Claire said and meant it. There was something about Donna always managing to say the right thing to make her feel better about the whole ordeal. “You too, guys.” She nodded at Patience and Donna before she turned and headed towards where Anael was parked.

She could hear the sounds of the car doors closing and then driving away, and she tried not to worry about Sioux Falls too much. For now, she had to deal with an angel intent on getting her way and insisting that Claire owed her a favour.

Anael was already waiting for her at the wheel. She got inside of Anael’s car, taking the passenger seat and holding her bag protectively in her lap. “So, can all angels drive or what?” she said, unable to stop herself from making that comment.

“I’d say about six years of learning to move around without my wings taught me some essential human skills,” Anael replied with no anger in her voice. Claire stopped herself from asking what she meant and picked another question.

“Where are we headed, then?” She had assumed that Anael was just going to zap her to heaven, but it looked like she was going to drive, and Claire didn’t want to be any further from Sioux Falls than she had to be.

“Heaven’s gates themselves,” Anael said with a smile, elucidating no clarification on Claire’s part. “I haven’t been there since the Lucifer debacle, and I really hope they’re willing to listen to my solution this time.”

With a smile that Claire didn’t return, Anael pressed the pedal and drove in the opposite direction from the path Donna and Patience had taken, and Claire tried not to let her inner panic take over.

 

v.

When she woke up, she almost turned the boat over.

“Whoa, slow down there,” somebody said, and Claire nearly flailed again.

It was a sunny day, the sky clear blue without a single cloud in the sky, and she was in the middle of the lake in an old rowboat with none other than Kaia Nieves.

“What are you doing here?” Claire demanded, shrinking back from her. Kaia only blinked back at her in confusion. “No, I’m dreaming. That’s it,” she said to herself. She couldn’t remember ever having a lucid dream, but then again, she’d never thought she’d be a sucker for that djinn dream. “Come on, wake up, wake up,” she muttered to herself. Though it seemed like a peaceful dream compared to her usual ones about running through the Bad Place, she didn’t want to see Kaia face to face like this.

“You’re not going to wake up,” Kaia informed her. “Anyway, your destination is still half an hour away if you wake up.”

Claire looked up to stare at her. “What?”

“You still have half an hour to go,” Kaia repeated.

“But if this is a dream, how would you know?” Claire reasoned both to herself and the dream version of Kaia, feeling like her head was spinning despite the eerie stillness of the water beneath the boat.

Kaia shrugged, staring up into the sky. “Didn’t I tell you before? I’m a dreamwalker, though I usually only visit one place in particular. Never been in an actual dream before. Guess this is my first time.”

“But you’re dead,” Claire argued, trying to understand what was going on.

Unless, a voice in her head whispered, unless Kaia’s not actually dead.

No, that wasn’t true. Claire had seen her die; she had to get these thoughts out of her head before she built up too much false hope.

Kaia didn’t reply, and Claire snuck a glance at her to see that she was gazing out across the lake at where Jody’s house was. “I feel like I’m real though,” Claire heard her say quietly. “I remember this,” she said to Claire, eyes sweeping at the view around her. “I told you to jump in the lake. It was raining.”

“That was a djinn dream,” Claire carefully reasoned. She was growing more and more confused trying to figure things out, and she wondered why her brain hadn’t woken her up yet from the sheer amount she was trying to process at the same time.

“I think we should try it this time,” Kaia insisted, looking overboard. Claire looked too, but she didn’t see anything except for the blue impenetrable water, and she was reminded of how she fell in the first time. She shuddered at the thought, remembering the darkness that followed before she pulled through on the other side.

She was about to refuse Kaia – this dream version of her that Claire’s mind had conjured up – when Kaia reached out and placed her hand on top of Claire’s on the edge of the rowboat. Claire looked up sharply, startled at the warmth and the feeling of pins and needles where their skin met, just like when Kaia touched the scar on her forehead in a bold move that night under the stars.

Claire swallowed the onslaught of feeling that rushed over head, and she drew her hand back slowly, aware of the rapid thumping of her heart. She’s dead, Claire told herself, and this is a dream.

If Kaia had felt anything from that touch, she didn’t let on. She gave Claire the same determined look from that djinn dream, and she stood up in the rowboat, precariously tipping the delicate balance that kept the rowboat afloat. Claire yelped, feeling the boat begin to sway and she rushed over to the other side of her seat in an attempt to balance it.

“Kaia, stop!” Claire said, desperately holding onto the side of the boat.

“There’s something down there that I need, I know it,” Kaia insisted, deaf to Claire’s pleas. “Claire, I need you to come with me.” She reached out the palm of her hand, and Claire hesitated for a second, body slanted sideways in her seat with both her hands grabbing the right side of the rowboat.

This is a dream, she told herself again. There was no harm in following whatever her dream wanted her to do, despite the sense of dread that was building in her stomach every time that Kaia insisted that she had to go down into the water. Biting her lip, she reached a hand out to Kaia’s. But before she could ever grab on, she felt the world tilt dangerously, and she yelled out, shutting her eyes tight and waiting for her body to hit the surface of the water.

It never came, even after seconds of counting, and Claire slowly opened her eyes to find herself curled into a tight ball in the passenger seat of Anael’s car. The seatbelt was cutting into Claire’s shoulder, and she unclasped it, realizing that they had come to a stop.

She looked outside, only seeing that they were in the parking lot of what seemed to be a suburban park. It seemed to be mid-afternoon, but the park was otherwise empty. Claire had to wonder how far they had travelled. It didn’t feel like very long, but Claire didn’t recognize the location.

“Where are we?” she asked, her throat dry after the nap she took.

“Heaven’s gates,” Anael answered, and Claire gave her a look of disbelief. Anael pointed ahead through the window, and Claire could see that just beyond the trees, the path led to a clearing where she could see an empty playground. Though it seemed innocuous from far away, Claire could feel the hint of power radiating from that direction when she stared at it, like it was tugging at her chest with a string.

She thought about the supposed grace that was residing inside of her – _Castiel’s_ grace, possibly. She’d texted him about it earlier in the car ride, but he hadn’t replied, just like he hadn’t replied to her other messages asking for his advice on opening rifts into other worlds.

“Let’s go,” Anael said, getting out of the car, and Claire scrabbled to follow, carrying the backpack with her. She followed closely behind Anael, eyes darting around for sights of other people, or even other angels, but so far there was nobody around. She found it a little spooky. It was a warm early spring afternoon, and suburban families would surely be out and about, but the park remained empty, like the angels had put a ward up.

It was only until they’d reach the playground that Claire spotted the first person. A white woman slipped out from behind the slide like she had been there waiting the entire time, and Claire’s heart jumped a couple of paces higher.

The woman was dressed in a plain gray business attire, her long dark hair curled around her sharp features, and she regarded Anael without a smile. “Hello, Anael,” she said, her tone courteous but pointed.

“Dumah,” Anael replied, though even Claire could hear the tension in her voice, and she wondered if she should be alerted too. “Surprising to see you on guard duty today, but I suppose heaven doesn’t have the arsenal left to spare any pieces.” She paused for a moment, but Dumah didn’t reply. “Fortunately, I brought someone who I think can help. A human with angel grace.” She stepped slightly to the side to reveal Claire, and Claire couldn’t help feeling woefully underdressed for the occasion.

“Hey,” she managed to say, hoping that Dumah wouldn’t fry her on the spot.

Dumah was impassive. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Heaven’s gates are sealed. No one can come in and no one can come out.” Her lips twisted into a half sneer. “Unfortunately, Naomi closed them before I could get the memo.”

There was a pause where it seemed that Anael was assessing the situation. Then she marched over to the tiny sandbox, kneeling down and pushing the sand away with her hand before she stood up and dusted the sand off on her jeans. “So, it’s true,” she said without emotion. “That explains why simple tasks have been so much more…difficult.” She pulled up the sleeve of her shirt discreetly, frowning while she rubbed her hand over a red spot on her skin before she pulled the sleeve down. She shot Claire a warning look when she noticed that she was watching and Claire averted her eyes.

If Dumah noticed that exchange, she didn’t comment. “To say the least,” Dumah said, holding her hands out slightly to the side like she was showing she was powerless too. “And I believe we’re two of the only three angels left on earth.”

“The other being Castiel,” Anael guessed, her lips pulling up to one side sardonically. She turned to Claire, and Claire knew that this was her chance to make things go her way. Anael’s perfectly laid out plans had gone awry, and Claire would be damned if she let the chance slip away for her to turn things around for herself.

“If there’s no way inside of heaven, then there’s nothing I can do,” Claire began, adopting a false regretful tone like she truly cared about the state of heaven. She hoped she was convincing enough. “But my family is in trouble right now. There are demons coming after them, and I need to go help them, whether you want to come with me or not.”

She was tempted to immediately turn and leave, though Anael was the one with a car, and if worst did come to worst with the demons, there would be two, not one, angels to deal with the issue. She didn’t like angels, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about Dumah at the moment, but having angels on their side against demons would be immensely helpful.

There was silence for a moment while the two angels stared at her, and Claire was about to cut her losses and go when Dumah spoke up. “If it’s demons you need me to fight against, I’ll come,” Dumah offered, taking a step forward.

Anael was frowning, but she caved the moment Dumah agreed. “Fine,” she said in a tone that was nearly snappish for the first time today. Claire half-smiled, knowing that she had won this much too easily with Dumah on her side. Though she didn’t doubt that Anael would come back for that heaven promise one day or another, but not in the near future from the sign of it. And now that Anael knew that heaven was sealed off, she seemed at a loss for what to do, though her mouth was pulled into a thin determined line.

Maybe that’s why Castiel hadn’t been responding to her, Claire thought. It made sense, after all, if he was dealing with the issue of being on his own and locked out of heaven, no pun intended. But he did text her, so maybe he just had bad reception, wherever he was.

Dumah took the passenger seat when they all got into the car, much to Claire’s dismay, and they drove in an awkward silence for hours. Claire didn’t want to tell Anael to hurry up, but at the same time, she really wanted Anael to hit the pedal.

Sioux Falls was a lot closer than their drive to Monroe City, and Claire eventually saw the telltale familiar signs telling that she was in the county. She gave Anael directions on the road towards Jody’s house, feeling the anxiousness jumping around in her body. The sun was setting, casting an orange hue against the landscape, and Claire clenched her hands into fists, telling herself to remain calm.

When they finally reached the house though, everything seemed to be in order. For a moment, Claire hoped that they had made it in time, or that maybe Patience had interpreted her vision wrong, but then her phone starting to ring, and she saw the front door open with Alex emerging, a phone held up to her ear in one hand and her other hand crossed around her waist. She was frowning, and Claire immediately felt her heart sink.

Anael pulled to a stop on the curb in front of the house, and Claire jumped out of the car, slamming the door behind her. She waved her hand at Alex. “Hey! I’m here,” she called, praying against all odds that all Alex had to tell her was that she forgot to turn the stove off before she left the house.

Alex hung up the phone as soon as she saw Claire, but the solemn expression on her face didn’t let up. “We’ve got a problem,” she said, and Claire noticed that her voice was shaky. “Jody’s missing.”

“What?” Claire exclaimed. She was too late. All that meandering around with Anael and the whole heaven business was a waste of time, and she felt a bubble of frustration building inside of her.

Alex exhaled, trying to calm herself. “When I came home the house was a mess, and there were signs of a fight. I looked around the entire house, but I couldn’t find Jody. She couldn’t have gone anywhere else – her stuff was still inside the house.”

Just then, the door opened, and Donna and Patience emerged with equally grim faces. When Donna saw Claire, she shook her head helplessly. “We didn’t make it back in time,” Donna explained. “We called her, but it wasn’t enough.”

Claire looked at Patience, but she was looking at the ground helplessly. “No visions,” she said sadly. “I have no idea where they went.”

“If it’s demons, then let me,” Dumah said, suddenly beside Claire like she had been there the whole time. Alex, Donna, and Patience frowned at her, noticing her presence for the first time.

“She’s also an angel,” Claire explained quickly, and she could see Alex raise an eyebrow at the whole ordeal, glancing over at Anael who was waiting outside of the car on the curb. If she thought Claire was playing a joke or that the whole thing was weird, she didn’t make much of it.

“I’ll have to touch an item of hers,” Dumah explained. “Then I can sense her lifeforce, wherever it may be in this world.”

“Yeah, come with me,” Alex said, shooting Claire a look. Claire nodded once, letting Alex know that she trusted Dumah for now. Alex took the lead with Dumah close behind and Claire, Patience, and Donna at the rear. Claire took a look around the house and felt like her heart was falling deep into the crevice of a bottomless pit. She should have come here first instead of going to heaven’s gates like Anael wanted.

The interior was completely trashed: the couches and tables were overturned and there was glass everywhere, like someone had been thrown against the window. Cups and books were lying on the floor, and there were scuff marks all over the floor. It reminded Claire too much of the time when they had come home after the whole deal with the Rift was over and the house was a mess due to the monster’s search for Kaia. She had felt nothing but despair at the sight of it – a reminder of her failure to keep her oath to Kaia, and she had retreated to her room instead of cleaning up with everybody else.

This time couldn’t have the same outcome, she promised herself. Jody had to make it out alive, no matter the cost.

Alex passed Dumah Jody’s keys, and Dumah skimmed her hand over the surface, her eyes glowing a dark blue for a moment before she blinked it away. “She’s at an abandoned shipyard not to far away from here,” Dumah described to them. “The name –”

“Larsen Brothers Shipyard,” Donna finished, her expression grim, and Claire felt like she had been punched in the stomach.

“We have to leave now, then,” Claire, facing the three women. “We have a location, so let’s go.”

“Except,” Anael said, drawing out the word. She had appeared at the house, leaning against the doorway with her arms crossed. “You’re talking about demons. Have any of you ever hunted one before? Not to mention the possession.”

Claire scowled, but Anael was right. She didn’t know about Donna or Jody, but she herself had never fought demons or found a case where the perpetrator was a demon. And from the alarmed look on Patience’s face, she wasn’t forgetting the sudden possession any time soon. It was going to be dangerous.

“Jody had anti-possession rings and weapons stored away,” Donna piqued in. “As long as we get those out, we’ll be fine, right Anael?” She gave Anael a bright smile, to which Anael didn’t reply, though Claire could have sworn that she frowned for a second.

“Don’t worry about me; I have my own weapon,” Claire informed her. Donna nodded without questioning what it was, but Claire could almost see the roll in Alex’s eyes. _Of course she has a weapon for everything_.

Leaving the others behind in the house, Claire headed out to Anael’s car where her bag was still lying half-forgotten in the backseat. She opened the bag, looking at the other assortment of items that she thought she’d use, including a fake FBI badge, some dress clothes, and a small switchblade for hiding up her sleeves.

Though it wasn’t hard to find it. She pulled out the large angel blade that was almost the length of her entire arm. It had come from Tamiel, way back when she’d first found her mother after so many years of searching. Tamiel had used this blade to kill her mother, and in return, Claire had killed him with it. She held onto the cool hilt of the blade – no the _sword_ – and stared at it. She remembered when Castiel told her that all angel blades were created using a fragment of the angel’s grace, and he had offered to take it out of her sight and destroy it, but Claire had turned it down. Though the weapon came with bad memories, Claire thought that this was her way of reclaiming it, of using this weapon for good, not evil.

A voice from her right shook her out of her memories. “What is that?” someone said in wonder, and Claire nearly jumped back in surprise. She looked over to see the angel, Dumah, standing outside of the car, her eyes fixed on the angel sword.

“It’s an angel sword,” Claire explained somewhat reluctantly. “I, uh, got it when I killed an angel.”

That admission did no favours for the apparent situation in heaven right now, but in Claire’s defense, Tamiel was an actual rogue angel who had been cut off from heaven years ago due to his kind’s habit on feeding on the human race. “He was a Grigori,” Claire added, in an attempt to mitigate any anger on Dumah’s part.

But Dumah didn’t look angry. “A Grigori,” Dumah mused, testing the word out on her lips, and Claire figured that Dumah was probably a lower tier of angels if she didn’t know about the supposedly ancient race.

It was then that she remembered the situation with Sister Jo and Anael. She felt that sense of panic in her chest again, and she swallowed it down. “So Dumah,” she asked carefully, trying to act like this was a casual conversation about a case on hand. “Your vessel, are you…?” Claire couldn’t find the words she was looking for.

Like Anael, Dumah looked down at her body like this was the first time she was seeing it. “‘Am I’?” Dumah repeated, prompting Claire for more.

Claire twirled her index finger at Dumah, indicating to her vessel. “Like is there anybody in there,” Claire said. “You know, possession, but angel-style.”

Dumah stared at her blankly before she started laughing, and Claire could only watch the bizarre scene without comment, wondering what she said wrong.

“No,” Dumah finally said, calming herself. “I originally inhabited this vessel during the fall, but I left when we found heaven’s gates again and I was let inside to do internal work. This is merely a reconstruction of what my original vessel looked like.”

Claire didn’t know that angels could do that, but she didn’t want to probe about this vessel thing any further. Talking about it too much was going to make her stomach turn. No matter what, it was still possession, and angel or demon, it didn’t sit right with her.

“I know what you’re feeling,” Dumah said, and Claire looked sharply over, wondering if she had figured out Claire’s aversion to the whole angel vessels deal. She wasn’t ready for an angel to play therapist, but it turned out that Dumah had something else in mind. “Of wanting to obtain something so badly, you’d go in nearly defenseless at first.” She was talking about Claire’s insistence earlier to just head down to the shipyard.

Claire stared at the angel. “Jody is family,” she said. “It’s not about wanting _something_ , it’s about wanting to save her.”

“Of course,” Dumah said, dipping her head down respectfully. “I was just trying to understand it. I’ve never had a loved one I was trying to protect.”

“Not even God?” Claire asked, before she could stop herself. “Your God, I mean,” she clarified, in case it wasn’t obvious enough.

“That’s…different,” Dumah said. She paused, and Claire thought she was going to say something else, but she didn’t. She wanted to probe her more on what she was talking about, but just then, the other women came out of the house, Anael in the lead.

“Hey, Claire,” Alex called when she saw Claire getting out of the car. She tossed something in the air towards her, and Claire saw a flash of silver reflect before she caught it in her hands. Opening her palm, there was a plain metal band, and she examined it to find the inside etched with one symbol over and over again. It looked like a burning sun around a pentagon.

“This looks like a symbol out of Satan’s cult,” Claire commented, but she slid the ring on and felt no different than she did a second ago. She hoped that it worked.

“Very funny,” Alex said with a roll of her eyes.

“Claire will be riding with me and Dumah,” Anael announced, turning around so she could look at all of them. Her eyes were daring everybody else to say otherwise, and when no one spoke, she smiled. “That’s all agreed upon. Now, about the location –”

“We know how to get there,” Donna cut in, and Patience and Alex nodded. “We were there months ago for another situation.”

She was talking about Kaia and the Rift, and Claire had to wonder why – why demons, and why the shipyard, of all places? She couldn’t help but think there was some sort of connection, but Kaia had told Claire herself that she was kidnapped once – by angels. Could angels possibly be working with demons? Claire had to wonder about that, even if it sounded like the plot twist of a bad film. She wouldn’t put it past the likes of angels like Tamiel, but looking at Anael and Dumah, she was reminded of their low numbers. She wouldn’t put it past the angels to outhire demons to do their dirty work.

“Then lead the way,” Anael said, already making her way to the driver’s seat of her car while Claire was trying to figure out the enemy in her head. She took the backseat once again with Dumah and Anael in the front. The shipyard wasn’t too far, but it was on the outskirts, meaning that the drive was around half an hour. Claire could almost feel the jitters in her legs from waiting.

“Do you think this could be the work of other angels?” Claire asked the two, breaking the silence. “Like angels and demons, working together.”

Though Anael didn’t turn around, Claire could see the sharpness in her eyes from the top mirror, and she fell silent. “This can’t be angels,” Anael said, cutting off all discourse. “There are only twelve of us left, and nine of them are in heaven.”

Claire nodded without comment, leaning against her seat with her hand gripped tightly onto her angel sword, and they continued driving down the road towards the shipyard in silence.

 

vi.

Kaia was staring at her from the other side of the room that they shared in Jody’s house. “Hey,” she said, when Claire jerked back in alarm.

“This again?” she muttered she herself, kicking the blankets off the bed that she was lying in. She stared at Kaia, willing the image to distort in front of her, but it didn’t. “This is fake, and you’re dead,” she told the vision, hoping that it was enough to make the dream fade into something else.

Kaia only stared at her with impassive dark eyes.

Then she got up and pointed out the window. “You need to go there,” she said again, and Claire could see that she was indicating to the lake at the back of the house. “You’re getting closer but…” Kaia looked like she was struggling to remember something, but she couldn’t find the words.

Claire shook her head no. “This is a dream,” she repeated.

Kaia turned around to look at her and opened her mouth to speak. “We’re here,” she said, but instead of her voice, it was Anael’s instead. Claire leaned forward with a frown, but then the image dissipated, and she blinked herself into a weary wakefulness. It was dark outside, and Claire could hear the rain pattering against the outside of the car.

Anael and Dumah was staring at her, and she self-consciously sat upright, wiping the drool off the side of her mouth. “I was tired,” she tried to explain. Though the dream had left, Claire felt cold. She wasn’t sure why she kept having these dreams about Kaia in the djinn world, and why Kaia was constantly telling her to get to the lake. There was something eerie about it, but Claire didn’t know who to tell this to or even where to start unpacking it. Sure, she’d have occasional dreams about what happened in the Bad Place, but nothing as real as this had happened before.

The angels didn’t say anything, and they got out of the car. Claire followed, stepping outside to face the lash of the cold rain against her body. The others were already standing outside and waiting for them, looking miserable completely soaked in the rain.

“We’re going to split up,” Donna said when they approached. “We decided it would be best to have an angel on each team. I’ll be going with Patience. Dumah? Want to join us?”

“It’ll be my pleasure,” Dumah agreed.

“Good. The other team will be everybody else,” Donna said, looking at Anael, Alex, and Claire. Though Claire was dismayed at the fact that she would be going with Anael, she reasoned that it didn’t matter if she didn’t like Anael very much. They had to save Jody, and if the place was swarming with demons, it would be better to have an angel to help deal with it on both sides, so they couldn’t be flanked.

They crept up to the dark shipyard, and Claire couldn’t help being reminded of the last time they were here. It was early in the afternoon when they were fighting for their lives those months ago. Now, it was nearly pitch black if not for the flashlight that Alex and Donna had brought along.

The place was deserted, and for a moment, Claire had a suspicion that Dumah had gotten the place wrong or lied for some reason – or even worse, that she had planned for them to be captured by demons from the start. But then they heard a scuffling sound, and Alex shone the light in the direction, and they saw someone duck into a doorway.

“We’ll follow them,” Donna whispered. “You guys go on ahead.”

The group split up, and Claire followed Anael and Alex upstairs, taking the rear. When they reached the next floor, it was still empty, and Claire was tempted to go downstairs and find the person who had run away instead of searching this floor.

Though she did have one place she wanted to check, and she relayed the information to Anael. It could have been a coincidence that the demons chose this place to hold Jody captive, but she had a feeling that it was all connected somehow. There was no way it couldn’t be. “Check the room down the end of the hallway to the right,” Claire said, and Alex turned around to give her a questioning look as if to say _you think they’re connected?_ Claire nodded in response.

Claire’s grip on her angel sword tightened when they got closer to the room, and while she wanted to save Jody, a part of her wanted to walk in and find that the room was completely empty and that nobody had been in there since what happened the last time.

Unfortunately for Claire, she spotted Jody immediately in the room lit up by the stormy sky, tied up to a chair similar to how Anael had been restrained. She was passed out, her head lolling to one side, and though Claire couldn’t see if she was injured due to the darkness, she felt a flash of anger swell up inside of her at whoever did this.

Alex had been thinking similarly, and they both rushed into the room, pushing past Anael and towards Jody. “Wait!” Anael called, but it was too late.

The demons had been hiding in the shadows of the room, and they suddenly leapt into view. Men and women with possessed bodies were blocking their path, slowly approaching them on all sides with wide grins on their faces, and Claire hoped that they also had poor visibility in the darkness, but she didn’t put all her money on that bet.

“You go ahead and free Jody,” she told Alex. “I’ll handle them.” She lifted up her angel sword defensively. It was a heavy thing, but over the years of use she had gotten familiar with the weight, and it sat comfortably in her hands.

She jumped at the demons directly in front of her distracting them from Alex, though she was met with a blow against the sword that knocked her backwards onto the floor, the weapon nearly falling out of her hands. The demon approached her with the makeshift weapon – a rusty pipe that seemed like it was ripped out of the ship itself. Claire rolled out of the way as the demon struck down at the ground. She got onto her feet again and tried for a knockout blow over the demon’s head, but another demon lunged at her from the side, pinning her onto the floor.

She growled, kicking at the demon and trying to get away, knowing that she was at a major disadvantage. There were too many of them around, even though she could see that Anael had unsheathed her own angel blade and had also joined the fray. Claire had thought herself familiar with her weapon, but now she was finding out just how rusty she was at close combat. Adding onto that, she didn’t want to kill anybody, knowing that most of them were humans under the control of demons.

The demon above her was too strong for her to fend off, and she held up her angel sword to parry a strike down, trying to use the blow to push herself upwards, but it ended up knocking her weapon away from her. She watched the angel sword skitter away in dismay, watching another demon kick it further away from her.

She was completely defenseless now, and her kicks were doing nothing to deter the demon. She couldn’t see Alex, but she hoped that she had gotten Jody to safety somehow, and the rest of the demons seemed interested in halting Anael, who was still fighting in the corner. Angels were experts at combat, but somehow, Claire got the impression that she wasn’t faring so well on her own. The demon above her had gotten hold of a knife now, and Claire could see that the demon was aiming it down, straight at her heart, and she shut her eyes, willing it to be over quick. Jody had always tried to get Claire to stop hunting, citing that she would meet an early end, and now here she was, helpless on the ground in the same place where Kaia went off months ago into the Rift only to be killed. It was strangely ironic, Claire thought, that Patience had a vision of Claire dead in this room, and it had turned out to be wrong. Now, she would finally get things right with Claire.

Just as Claire could almost feel the tip of the knife enter into her skin, a voice echoed through the room, loud and booming like it was coming straight from Claire’s mind. “ _STOP_.”

Claire thought that she was the only one who imagined it, but the knife clattered to the side, and the demon’s grip on her loosened. Seeing the opportunity, she immediately jumped up, kicking the demon away and grabbing onto the knife.

She turned around, only to see a vision that nearly stopped her heart.

There, standing in the exact place where the Rift once opened, was the cloaked figure that had killed Kaia in the Bad Place.

Claire had been waiting a long time for this – she had been planning to find this thing and put it out of its misery, and after a long search, it was here in front of her entirely out of its own desire. She started stringing the puzzle pieces together: this thing was probably after her family, wanting to tie up loose ends after its encounter with her and Kaia in the Bad Place. And by the way the demons had all frozen at the sound of the voice, Claire assumed that she had taken control of a band of demons for whatever reason, and now they were working for the cloaked figure.

And now was Claire’s chance to charge at it and kill it once and for all, but she couldn’t move. Her body was ice cold, and she couldn’t breathe. When she looked at the figure, she could only see one thing: Kaia bleeding out on the dark ground with a spear sticking out of her stomach – Kaia, eyes pleading, hand growing slack in Claire’s hold, but her thoughts audible even to Claire. _You failed me_.

 _I’m sorry_ , Claire had thought. _I’m so sorry._

“You have something I need,” the cloaked figure said, speaking for the first time. The voice was distorted, like Claire was hearing multiple bells jangling harshly in her ears, and she winced. “Get her.”

Claire didn’t have the chance to fight back as demons surrounded her, grabbing onto her arms and forcing her to drop the knife that she had picked up. She struggled, but the demons were too strong for her to break out of their hold.

She was being marched towards the figure now, and she couldn’t tell if she was going to be publicly executed. She could see Alex now that she was closer, and she was closer. Alex was on the floor, trying to untie the knots on Jody’s feet, but Jody was still dead to the world. Claire could see there were scratches all over Jody’s face, and she once again futility tried to break free of the demons.

The cloaked figure had turned around and was drawing strange hand motions in the air, a dark light emulating from their fingertips, and Claire realized that a crack of orange light was growing, like it was ripping through the air itself – the Rift. The thing was trying to bring her to the Bad Place.

She struggled for freedom again, grabbing onto anything she could, but she was paraded closer until she was right next to the figure. If she could just break free, she could launch out and attack Kaia’s murderer. But Claire was weaponless, and though the cloaked figure hadn’t pulled out any more spears, she was certain that it had something lethal in that robe.

She was trying to think of another plan when she heard Donna’s voice.

“Claire!” she yelled, and Claire turned around to see that Donna, Patience, and Dumah had entered the room. Dumah immediately dove in to help to Anael fend off the demons with her own angel blade, and Patience and Donna were met with more demons who blocked their path.

The figure beside Claire turned around to look at them, and though Claire couldn’t see its face, she was certain there was a scowl. The figure nodded at the demons, and looked at the Rift, now glowing steadily in the darkness, indicating to bring Claire through.

“No!” Patience yelled, and she heard something whip through the air like it was being thrown. She turned just in time to see a large metal pipe that Patience couldn’t possibly have picked up with her bare hands fly through the air and hit the cloaked figure across the head.

There was a loud and hollow bang that made Claire wince, and the figure stumbled back. She looked to see that Patience was gaping wide-mouthed, staring at the scene in shock.

But it wasn’t just the object flying through the air on its own that was shocking. The figure stumbled and then lifted its head up again, the hood of the robe falling down to reveal a curly-haired girl with blood matted against one side of her face. “Kill her,” she commanded the demons at Patience, and this time, the voice was undeniably familiar.

“Kaia,” Claire breathed.

The figure – _Kaia_ – looked at her without recognition, her eyes lacking her usual gentle warmth, and dull in the gleam of the Rift.

“You’re coming with me,” she said, and Claire was plunged headfirst through the Rift.


	3. Act Three

ACT THREE

The Face Behind the Mask

i.

They were sitting in the rowboat again, and Kaia was rowing the boat around the lake. The sunny weather was hot, bearing down on Claire, and for once, Claire felt like jumping into the lake to cool herself off.

“Why do I keep having dreams of this?” Claire asked to no one in particular, and Kaia looked up at her. She didn’t say anything, though Claire could see the answer in her expression. It was the same one that Kaia had given her over and over again in these dreams: that there was something here and she had to dive to the bottom of the lake.

“I think it’s nice,” Kaia ended up saying with shrug. “I’ve always wanted to do this, you know.”

“Row a boat?”

“No,” Kaia said, shaking her head. “Well, partially. But I just wanted a quiet afternoon where I could be out to enjoy the sunlight and not feel like death.”

Claire was a quiet for a second. “You used to live in a group home, right?”

“Something like that,” Kaia said, though she didn’t elaborate, and Claire got the feeling that she didn’t want to talk about it. Claire was about to change the topic, but then Kaia started talking again. “Do you ever want to be normal?”

Claire thought about it for a second. Did she ever really want to be normal? In her early days when her dad left, she remembered distinctly that she wanted him to come back and be a family again. And when she found out about the demon possession and angel possession, she would have given anything to prevent it from happening to her family ever again.

But then there was Jody and Alex, and the rest of the people that she met along the way when she was struggling to understand her place in the world. And Castiel wasn’t so bad, even if he didn’t call often, but it wasn’t like she expected him to be a replacement for her dad. Being a hunter – even an amateur one – had become a part of her life, and she couldn’t give it up. And even if she did, she’d find an article in the news that would tick too many points off her monster checklist one day, and she’d have to help solve the case. It was just what she did to help as many people as she could, so they would never feel like she did all those years ago alone in the car with her demon possessed mother, and her father gone and replaced by a cold, uncaring angel.

“I guess not,” was all Claire said in the end. “I did at one point, but then I realized it sucked.” She grinned at Kaia, and Kaia cracked a smile.

“Before I started learning to deal with my powers,” Kaia began slowly, “I had always thought they were a curse. My fault, somehow. But… People started to show me other things I could do with my powers, and I started to think that…maybe they weren’t so bad. Until…” She trailed off.

Until she was killed, Claire thought. She looked away, refusing to meet Kaia’s eyes. The guilt was eating at her. _You failed Kaia_ , a voice in her head whispered. _How dare you insult her memory with this fantasy – this dream of you two being together when you were the one who couldn’t prevent her death?_

She swallowed, looking back up so she could apologize to Kaia, but she was gone. Claire blinked, sitting back in shock and trying to understand where she went before she noticed that her surroundings were fading into black.

And then she woke up, gasping for air and lying on the dirty cement floor. A rat that was nearby squeaked and skittered away when Claire pushed herself up to a sitting position, feeling the sores all over her body like she had been beaten.

She _had_ been beaten – it was all coming back to her now. Right after they had landed on the other side, Claire had expected to be in the Bad Place, surrounded by the thick forest and most of all, somewhere to run off. She had been wrong, and they arrived in what looked to be an underground throne room with tiny jail cells and torture tables lining the room. Kaia – _fake_ Kaia – had demanded that Claire ‘return what had been stolen’, and when Claire didn’t understand what they were talking about, she had her demons trying to force the answer out of her, which obviously didn’t work because Claire had no idea what she was talking about in the first place. She hadn’t taken _anything_ from them. If anything, they were the ones who had stolen something: Kaia’s life and her identity.

And now it looked like she was locked in a dark jail cell of some sort. It was then that she noticed that what had awakened her was someone unlocking the cell. The iron bars were moving up, and in any other situation, Claire would have used that chance to push through and try to make an escape, but she was already drained from her earlier fight, and she had no idea if this was still the Bad Place, just another iteration of it. There was someone who had to be a demon waiting for her outside, flanked by two others.

“Our queen wishes to see you,” the one in the middle said.

“Go to hell,” Claire spat, and the demons laughed, much to her frustration.

“Don’t worry, we’re already in hell,” the demon sneered while the other two headed inside the cell and grabbed Claire off the floor on both sides, leading her out of the cell and down the darkened cobblestone hallway.

Claire wasn’t sure if the demon had been trying to mess with her head, but if it was the truth, then this really was supposed to be hell. It was a lot dimmer and colder than Claire would have imagined it to be, though she didn’t voice her thoughts to her demon jailers.

They stopped in front of a large set of double doors, and Claire was jerked to a standstill. “Do not disrespect our queen,” the demon leading them hissed at her. Claire gave the demon a glare but didn’t say anything. Her heart was pounding in her chest at the thought of coming face to face with Kaia again – no, not Kaia – the thing that was wearing her face.

The demons opened the doors, leading Kaia into the same throne room that they had landed in after opening the Rift. Claire’s eyes darted around the room, expecting to see the familiar orange glow of the Rift somewhere in the room, but it seemed to have closed after they all jumped through. There was no escape route in sight.

Kaia was lounging on the throne in the centre of the room, one of her legs thrown over the armrest while the other was on the floor. She leaned her back against the opposite armrest, looking the most bored and carefree that Claire had ever seen her. Her hood was down, curly hair spilling over, and there were two demons on each side standing behind her in black suits with impassive expressions. To Claire’s anger, she was playing with the angel sword – _her_ angel sword – running the tip of her finger lightly down the blade. When Claire entered the room, she glanced over at Claire through hungry eyes like she was trying to determine how much her organs sold on the black market if she were to dissect her. Claire shuddered at the cold feeling that drenched over her, looking away from Kaia. As if killing Kaia wasn’t bad enough – this thing had probably taken on her face after it murdered her, and Claire’s revulsion strengthened her resolve to kill it.

She stared at her angel sword, twirling around in the palm of Kaia’s hand. The opportunity was ripe, and now it was up to Claire to find an opening, no matter the risks.

“Claire Novak,” the thing wearing Kaia’s face said, and Claire felt like she was being slapped. Hearing Kaia’s voice say her full name… It was almost too much for Claire to handle. She forced herself to steady her trembling hands. “I’ve given you a few days after your mishap to tell me the truth again. Where is the soul you took?”

A few days? No wonder Claire’s body felt so tired. Now that she had mentioned it, Claire was also starving too. Though if a few days had passed while she was unconscious and having dreams about Kaia and that djinn place again, maybe the others were close to finding her, and then she’d have backup when she fought against Kaia’s murderer.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Claire replied, and she felt one of the demon’s grip tighten on her arm at the wrong answer, even though Claire was telling the truth. She had no idea what fake Kaia wanted, but if she knew, she wouldn’t be handing over information so easily either. Claire glared at her, hating the callous expression displayed on Kaia’s face and the languid way that her murderer wore Kaia’s body.

Claire spoke before she could stop herself, the words a low growl in her throat but still audible enough for everyone to hear. “Let go of Kaia.” She gave Claire a disinterested once-over, not moving from her position in the throne, and Claire’s anger gave way to a rush of boldness. “I know you’re possessing her body,” she said. “But don’t think that I won’t find a way to kill you even if you are trying to use Kaia as a shield. And when I kill you, I’m going to – augh!” Claire cried out in pain when one of the demons holding her twisted her arms so hard that she felt like they were going to pop out of her shoulders. She gritted her teeth and blinked away the tears of agony stinging her eyes.

“Don’t you dare speak to the future ruler of hell like that,” the demon spat, punishing her sore arm once again to make a point, and Claire bit the inside of her mouth to keep from vocalizing, but an involuntary whimper escaped.

Fake Kaia, who had been watching the action distantly the entire time, was now frowning. “Stop,” she commanded, and the two demons restraining let go of her immediately. Claire’s knees hit the ground while she gasped, a dizzying weakness overtaking her senses.

From the corner of her vision, she saw the demon wearing Kaia swing her leg off the arm of the throne and begin to walk up to Claire. She carried Claire’s angel sword in her right hand, dragging the sword across the floor, and Claire winced at the screeching sound it made.

She crouched down in front of Claire on the soles of her feet, barely a foot apart and stared into Claire’s eyes. “Listen to me,” she said calmly, though Claire could hear a familiar tremor in the undertone in her voice – _Kaia’s_ voice. For a second, she could almost pretend that it was actually Kaia who was in front of her, quietly revealing the horrors of the Bad Place that she was subjected to every night she fell asleep without the aid of amphetamines. Then she spoke again, and the illusion was shattered.

“I am the Collector of spirits,” she said evenly, like she expected Claire to somehow know and understand whatever the hell that even meant in the first place. “And you’ve stolen something from me. I’m giving you the easy option to hand it over, or I will find your friends and your family, and we can do it the hard way.”

It was disturbing to hear all of that straight from Kaia’s lips, and Claire had to harshly remind herself that it wasn’t Kaia, no matter how much it looked and sounded like her. It had to be a class of demon – known as the Collector of spirits, apparently – from the Bad Place, and now it was establishing itself in the supernatural hierarchy here through Kaia’s body. Claire had nothing but loathing and hatred for this thing. It wasn’t Kaia anymore – it was just her dead body being animated like a puppet. If she had to destroy Kaia’s body to kill it, so be it, she resolved.

Her eyes flickered down to the angel sword that she was still holding, almost prone on the ground due to its length. Claire didn’t waste a second; she lunged forward despite the worn feeling in her entire body and reached her out for the angel sword. The angelic chilled steel granted her touch, and she pulled it out of the Collector’s loose grip, using the momentum of her body to knock the Collector backwards.

The Collector stumbled, falling backwards onto the floor, but they quickly recovered when Claire took another leap forward, aiming the angel sword directly at their borrowed chest. The Collector rolled quickly to the side, and Claire missed, the point of the sword jabbing so sharply into the cement that it left a mark. The Collector had gotten up to their knees now, staring at Claire with intense focus, and Claire figured this might be her last chance at vengeance before they pulled out the spear that they had originally used to kill the real Kaia.

She charged at Kaia’s body, intending to slash at the soft space in her neck and sever the tendons connecting her body to her head. Though Claire made the mistake of hesitating for a brief moment when she was almost upon her, and the Collector immediately took the opening to launch themselves at Claire, their hand shooting up faster than Claire anticipated to latch onto her wrist, twisting it with an inhuman strength that sent a wave of pain down her arm, forcing Claire to drop the sword.

And then it was like Claire was plunged into a deep nightmare.

She had fallen into that lake from the djinn dream again, the air becoming dense and impenetrable, encasing her in a world of stilled darkness. Her entire body froze to a stop, and she thought she could feel something icy and intrusive squirming its way inside of her body, heading straight towards her heart. She gasped for air, her lungs feeling so compressed like they were about to collapse at a moment’s notice.

Then the feeling began to slowly subside, the frigidness crawling through her body retreated, leaving only the sensation of a slimy trace to indicate its presence. Claire’s vision cleared, and she realized that she was lying with her back on the floor, her hands clawing against her throat in a desperate plea for air. The Collector had been kneeling to her left, their borrowed palm pressed to Claire’s forehead. They removed their hand, and Claire shot up to a sitting position, watching the grim expression play out on Kaia – no, the Collector’s face. Her angel sword was gripped tightly in Kaia’s other hand, and she knew that she had lost the opportunity.

What had happened? She stared at the Collector, bracing herself for another attack that would potentially kill her, but the Collector had stood up and was walking to their throne. Claire knew that it was a demon of some sort – but that feeling…that crushing feeling of being trapped and probed by some strange essence… Claire felt sick.

“Take her back,” the Collector said once they had reclaimed their seat again. They were examining the angel sword again, and Claire was tempted to have another go at it, even though she knew that the demon could make her catatonic again with just a single touch. She gritted her teeth, letting the two demons who had escorted her out of the jail cell grab her by the arms and lift her up once again. The Collector glanced up from the sword, and Claire shot them a loathing glare.

Their eyes flickered back down to the angel sword. “Before you leave,” they said without looking away, “tell me about this weapon. What can it do?” There was curiosity and hunger in their eyes lit up against the sheen of the sword, and more than anything, Claire wanted to break free of the demons and snatch the weapon away.

“Nothing much,” Claire spat, hoping that the hatred in her voice was clear. “Just for killing demons like you.”

She waited for a response – either the demons kicking her around again or for the demon wearing Kaia to put her back into that nightmare induced world with a touch of their fingers. Instead, she only got a flick of a wrist from them, signalling her dismissal.

Claire was lurched around by her jailers and led out through the doors. A deeper chasm of hopelessness had opened up in her heart, and she thought back to her promise of vengeance for Kaia. At this rate, Claire would fail Kaia once again, even after Kaia’s death. There were too many demons around and no allies, and Claire was both weaponless and weak. And not to mention the demon residing in Kaia’s body was certainly powerful and also the future ruler of hell, apparently.

She shuddered at the thought of going head to head with an entity that had established themselves so easily and so high up into the demon hierarchy. When she had first decided to pursue Kaia’s murderer using the Rift, she hadn’t expected to end up in such a hopeless situation.

After a few twists and turns down the eternally dark hallways, Claire saw the familiar row of cells again, all enclosed by heavy iron bars. By the looks of it, Claire was the only prisoner. She twitched her arm a bit, testing the strength of the demons, but she could barely move an inch. She wouldn’t be able to break free and run off, even if she tried her hardest.

They tossed her into the cell, standing in front of the opening as they lowered the iron bars down. It hit the ground with a resounding slam that made Claire shudder. The demons, seeming to be satisfied, nodded at each other and left without a backwards glance.

Claire counted slowly to ten before she allowed herself to get up on her feet and examine her jail cell. She hadn’t had a chance when she had first arrived, having been knocked unconscious in a fight. The bars were rusty, she noted, but they were unyielding under her hands, and she figured that she’d have a better chance finding luck somewhere else than trying to forcibly break through her jail cell. She turned around, looking around at the dark cobblestone walls and tried to think. There had to be a weak spot somewhere.

“Looking for something, darling?”

Claire nearly jumped, but she took a deep breath to steady herself, turning around slowly and expecting to be greeted with another demon – her new guard, probably.

A red-haired white woman stood in front of her, makeup fabulously done up and outfitted in a form-fitting blue dress that was both simple but made her look beyond elegant. She was the bright spot in this compartment: she radiated with effortless grace in this dark, damp cell, and Claire had to admire the fact that she seemed completely at ease.

It was then that Claire realized that she was standing inside of the jail cell, not outside.

She took a step back, scrutinizing the suspicious woman who had suddenly appeared inside of the cell, but she wasn’t ready to rule her out as the enemy just yet. There was a possibility, she told herself, a small possibility that she could help Claire out of this predicament. “Who are you?” she asked.

“My name is Rowena,” the woman said, enunciating every syllable with a heavy Irish accent, and Claire stared back at her without recognition. After a brief moment of silence, she sighed. “Not that you’ll have hard of me, of course,” she muttered. “But I’m here to break you out, on the request of Jody Mills. Now that name rings a bell, doesn’t it?” she said with a smile when Claire’s eyes narrowed at the mention.

Though Claire’s heart leapt at the words, in reality she had no idea if whether or not Rowena was actually telling the truth. For all she knew, Rowena could be another demon, but at this point, she was probably the only one who could get Claire out of here if she wasn’t lying.

“Okay,” Claire began. “Say I believe you. How exactly do you plan on getting me out of here?” She crossed her arms around her chest.

Rowena tsk-ed at her. “It’s fairly simple, really,” she scoffed, and Claire almost rolled her eyes. If it was so simple, Claire would have busted out a long time ago. “And it’s lucky too that I prepared the spell in advance,” she said, pulling a brown pouch out of the stash in her dress. She held out the pouch to Claire, and Claire stared at the thing without reaching out for it.

“Come on, don’t be shy now,” Rowena encouraged.

“You’re a witch,” Claire said, the answer finally dawning on her. She took another small step backwards, remembering all that she knew about witches. She hadn’t encountered one during her hunts, but she knew that they were often dangerous and cruel and power-hungry. She couldn’t possibly imagine Jody enlisting her for help.

Rowena rolled her eyes. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she grumbled. “Hunters – you never know how to trust anyone else, do you?”

“Call it being on guard,” Claire replied tensely. She didn’t know why a witch would be interested in her right now, but it could only lead to no good. And even if she was just helping Jody like she said she was, there had to be some sort of catch to it.

In the distance, Claire could hear the sounds of footsteps and two voices conversing far away, and she froze, listening to the voices grow louder as they got closer.

“We don’t have time to dawdle,” Rowena hissed at Claire, and she tossed the pouch at Claire, who caught it out of reflex. She didn’t have time to drop it because Rowena immediately started chanting, and the bag heated up in Claire’s hand, sticking onto her hand like it was melting into her skin. Her body was heating up like she was catching on fire, and she looked down, staring at her hands, which was now giving off a purple glow like a candle had been lit up from the inside of her body. The voices grew even louder, and she could hear shouting now, but then there was a blinding light that forced Claire to shut her eyes, and an explosion knocked her backwards.

 

ii.

Claire landed facedown in a pile of cushions, and she groaned, rolling over and falling off the ledge with an undignified squeak onto the floor.

“Maybe I went a teensy bit overboard back there,” she heard Rowena’s voice, and she gingerly sat up from her spot on the floor, rubbing her sore back and taking in her surroundings.

It was Jody’s house, and all the other women were gathered close, staring at her with a mixture of concern and shock. There was also someone else that Claire didn’t recognize sitting down, her arms crossed around her chest. “Hey guys,” Claire said, using her flippant tone. She knew she had to have been missing for days, but she didn’t want to make Jody and the others worry too much about her.

“Claire!” Jody exclaimed, and Claire stood up to be engulfed by a tight hug from Jody. She winced slightly, her body creaking in protest. Jody let go of her, holding her at an arm's length and examined her face. “What happened to you?”

She figured that she was probably covered in scraps and bruises, and she shrugged off Jody’s grip, not wanting her to worry too much about her when Jody was the one who was abducted by demons in the first place. “I’m fine,” she insisted. “Are you okay? You know, when the demons got you.”

“They didn’t do much except for knock me out,” Jody said, dismissing Claire’s concern for her. “And that was over a week ago. Claire, what happened?”

She looked away from Jody, and she accidentally met Patience’s imploring eyes. She knew that someone must have told Jody about what they saw just before Claire was pulled through the Rift – Patience had flung something at the cloaked figure using some new power she had, and then the robe had fallen off to reveal none other than Kaia. They had to be dying to know about it.

“That thing wasn’t Kaia,” Claire mumbled. “It was a demon that was wearing her around.” Saying the words made Claire want to hurl, the thought of something possessing Kaia’s body like she was nothing more than a vessel. “It was the thing that killed her, back in the Bad Place. I know it.”

She saw the other women exchange looks, and she couldn’t tell if they believed her or if they thought she was just rambling. She clenched her fists. It was all true though, and she didn’t know how to convey it in anything other than the words she had.

“So, the thing in the Bad Place,” Donna began, “that was Kaia all along too? Even when it killed her?”

Claire’s first instinct was to say no, that the Collector had possessed Kaia after they left her body in the Bad Place, but she paused for a second to think about what Donna was saying. It didn’t make any sense for it to be true, she thought to herself, but she couldn’t find the sufficient argument to rebut Donna’s claim.

“I don’t think so,” she began slowly. “But the demon – they called themselves the Collector of spirits, whatever the hell that means,” Claire said with a shrug to the disbelieving faces around her. “And the other demons called them the future ruler of hell.”

She heard a scoff from behind her, and she was reminded that Rowena was still here. Turning around gave Claire the sight of Rowena lounging back in a couch like she had always been there, sipping on a cup of tea. “So that’s what all the demons are up to nowadays. What a bore,” she said with a sigh.

“What are you talking about?” Alex piped in, eyeing Rowena with suspicion, and Claire felt a rush of relief. She was glad that they were at least wary around the self-satisfied witch they didn’t know much about instead of welcoming her with wide arms.

Rowena put down her cup on the table. “After my son died,” she started, “I heard rumours that there were groups rising up in a bid for the throne. It seems they haven’t found a definitive ruler yet, and what Claire over there saw was probably just one of these factions. Not an actual ruler of hell, mind you,” she emphasized.

“Wait,” Patience began, and Claire could also feel the puzzle pieces falling into place. “You’re not saying that your son was –”

“The king of hell? Unfortunately, he was. That boy made some poor decisions in life, but in the end, he died under such noble circumstances.” She wiped away what seemed to be a single tear, but Claire was unsure whether or not it was actually a genuine show of emotions.

Claire was still trying to understand how a king of hell would have a witch for a mother when Anael cut in. “Enough about demons and hell,” Anael interrupted. “What did this thing want from you?”

She had almost forgotten that the two angels were still here, standing stoically in the background like guards. She wasn’t sure why they were still sticking around, even after they had discovered that Claire’s so-called angelic grace would be of no use since the gates of heaven were closed until further notice, but she had the feeling it had to do with Anael’s interest in Claire’s grace. Her heart sunk at the thought; she had managed to overlook it during the whole ordeal with the demons, but now it was back, a permanent fixture writhing inside her head.

Taking a deep breath to rid herself of the reminder, she thought back to her encounter with the Collector. “The thing wearing Kaia – they called themselves the Collector of spirits. I don’t know what that means,” she quickly added when she saw befuddled faces, “except that they were looking for me the whole time because I had taken something, and they wanted me to return it.”

“What did you take?” Patience inquired, almost cutting Claire off.

“Nothing,” Claire insisted. “But they said I had taken a soul. That’s all I know. As far as I know, I haven’t been stealing anyone’s soul.” She shrugged, and she hoped the others could make sense of the riddle somehow. Maybe ‘soul’ was code for something in demonish; Claire wouldn’t know.

Anael looked interested. “A soul?” she mused, but she didn’t say anything else.

Finally, Dumah spoke up. “The Collector of spirits,” she began somewhat reluctantly, and all attention turned over to the angel who was looking down at her feet, “is not exactly similar to a demonic entity. It exists in what you all have been calling the Bad Place.” She looked over at Jody for the name confirmation, and Jody nodded. Claire figured that they must have been sharing information about the cloaked figure while Claire was trapped. “It’s essentially that world’s Death.”

“Death?” Claire and Anael exclaimed at the same time. Anael shook her head vehemently. “No, that can’t be,” Anael argued. “If Death were to escape its own reality and enter into a different one for the time being, especially to claim a sacrilegious place…”

Dumah didn’t finish Anael’s sentence, but she looked grim enough for Claire to understand that this was bad.

“How do you know about this?” Anael demanded. “We were never told about other creatures and beings that could rival our strength.”

Claire thought that there was a twitch of a smile on Dumah’s lips before it disappeared back to a solemn aloofness. “You are lower ranked, Anael,” she stated, and Claire didn’t miss the way Anael’s expression soured at her words. “And when heaven’s numbers dwindled, I continued to be promoted. We have less than a dozen angels left so it’s only a given that I would be let in on some of heaven’s most guarded secrets.”

The woman whom Claire didn’t know let out a nervous laugh. “Oh boy,” she said nervously, “the angel situation would have been good news on any given day, but I have a feeling it’s bad news here, right?”

Claire wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but the thought of angels just fading from existence didn’t sound too bad. She didn’t like them much anyway, not even on a good day, and this was one of them.

“Right,” Anael agreed. She narrowed in on Claire like she was thinking about something, and Claire had a feeling that it wasn’t going to end well for her. “I think that this Collector of spirits – or Death – is talking about your grace.”

“Her grace?” Rowena asked, leaning forward from her seat and suddenly looking interested in Claire. “Are you saying she’s an angel?”

“I’m not an angel,” Claire began, but Anael interrupted her.

“It doesn’t change the fact that I sense the presence of grace in you,” Anael argued. “And if I’m right, then this Collector of spirits may be looking for your grace – stolen grace, specifically.”

Claire’s mouth was dry, and she thought back to the time when she was twelve, and her father was dying on the floor of an abandoned warehouse – just like how her mother would many years later. _Castiel_ , she thought. She had stolen Castiel’s grace, somehow all those years ago when she was just a child and she had allowed Castiel to save her father by taking control of her body. Something must have happened back then, she thought, and now there was residue of grace that had been growing in her body since she was a child. “Castiel,” she spoke aloud, and Anael narrowed her eyes at her.

“Stolen grace?” Jody said, shocked. “You don’t think that she actually killed an angel for grace, do you?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if everybody in this room has killed an angel,” Anael said, her mouth a flat line. “There’s only one way to find out whose grace it is.” She gave Claire a look that was genuinely sympathetic for the first time. “Claire, it’s going to hurt, but there’s only one way to figure this out. Is it alright if I check your soul?”

She wasn’t sure how Anael would go about doing so, and the warning made her nervous. Still, something told her that this was the first step in figuring out what the Collector wanted and how to get them to return back to the Bad Place where they belonged. She nodded her consent.

It was when Anael started to roll up her sleeves that Claire began to feel nervous. She pushed the sleeve of her dress shirt up to her elbow, folding it off at the top and approached Claire, and Claire got the feeling that this was going to hurt a lot more than Anael made it sound.

“I’m going to need something to put in her mouth, so she doesn’t bite her tongue off,” Anael said to Claire’s sense of dread, and Patience immediately volunteered to grab a piece of cloth from the kitchen.

“What are you going to do?” Jody said, standing up defensively behind Anael. “I swear if you hurt her –”

While Claire knew that Jody was concerned about her, she shook her head. “It’s fine,” she said even though she could feel her stomach doing rollercoaster flips at the thought of pain so intense that she could potentially bite her tongue off, “I can do this.”

Patience returned with the cloth, and Claire took it upon herself to place it securely in her mouth, making sure that she wouldn’t bite through it. She stared at Anael, and Anael gave her a small nod.

“You might want to look away,” Anael told the others. “And Claire, your soul is going to reject me, so try to keep still.”

And without warning, Anael plunged her forearm inside of Claire’s stomach.

But it wasn’t Claire’s stomach – the minute Anael’s hand met Claire’s flesh, it faded in and out until Claire could feel it – Anael’s _grace_ , burning so hot that Claire thought she was going to explode – probing deep inside her essence. Her soul, she thought vaguely in the midst of it. She could feel her soul, and Anael’s grace was slicing through it with ease, disintegrating her into tiny pieces, and she could feel her soul trying to tie itself back together, but Anael’s grace was a black hole, sucking in the fragments of her soul into itself, and Claire could feel herself dying – each fragment that broke off and was consumed caused a convulsion of pain to shock her entire body.

She tried to push the grace out, but it was anchored in place, cutting through the pieces of her soul with a burning serrated blade and opening up the bleeding depths of her soul.

And then she felt it – like someone had stuck a heated poker stick straight inside of her heart. Anael’s grace pierced into the deepest part of her soul, and Claire felt like something was ripping her very core into tiny little pieces, scattering her across space. She tried to fight back, but it was relentless, pulling and tugging at her foundation, trying to unravel her essence.

Then it was gone.

Claire was vaguely aware of the sense of someone yelling her name. She groaned, blinking a bit as her vision came back to her, the darkness clearing away to a fuzzy image of Jody kneeling in front of her.

“Claire! Is everything okay?”

She tried to open her mouth, but she felt like everything was dissolving into liquid. She tried to nod, her head lolling on its way down.

Jody’s angry voice felt like it was booming in her ears, and she winced. “What did you do to her?”

“That’s what happens when a human soul comes into contact with an angel’s grace, unfortunately,” she heard Anael say. “But there’s something more important than that. Claire, the grace inside of your body… It does come from an angel, but it’s not Castiel’s grace.”

Claire managed to look up at Anael, asking her for the answer with her eyes.

“It comes from another angel – an older one,” Anael explained. “Tamiel, the Grigori.”

 

iii.

Jody was standing inside of Claire’s room when she opened the door. She paused, noticing that Jody was flipping through the hunting journal on her desk, but Jody didn’t look up.

“Hey,” Claire said, drying her hair with the towel wrapped at the top of her head. “What are you doing?”

“Researching. You okay there?” She closed the book and leaned against the desk, arms crossed while she looked at Claire.

“Just peachy,” Claire said, giving her a fake smile. “I’m clean for the first time in days, though I spent most of it passed out in hell’s jail.” She shrugged, tossing the towel onto her bed. “But really, you can just ask me if you want to do research into my journal.” She was forcing a flippantness that she didn’t feel, and she hoped that Jody didn’t notice it.

Unfortunately for her, Jody knew Claire’s ploys all too well. She sighed, unfolding her arms and sitting down on Claire’s bed. “I don’t want to push you,” she explained. “So if it’s something you don’t want to talk about, then that’s fine.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it,” Claire argued, though she couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation for her reluctance to say anything after Anael revealed the name. She couldn’t tell Jody about how she stood in the shower and couldn’t stop thinking about how she now had a piece of her mother’s murderer residing inside of her – side by side along her soul, so close that they were nearly one. Would this be how Kaia would feel if she knew that her body was being strung along like a trophy by her killer?

When she had left the bathroom, she approached Anael and Dumah to help her get rid of the thing inside of her, but Anael had only shook her head, her expression a mixture of pity and helplessness: it had been much too long since Claire’s soul had latched onto the remnants of Tamiel’s grace, and it would be near impossible if not downright fatal to even attempt at extricate the grace from her soul.

It was no longer even Tamiel’s grace, Anael had warned her. She had only identified it due to close examination at the core – the grace was now undeniably Claire’s.

She didn’t want angel’s grace though. This was worse than that the werewolf nightmare. She’d had this _thing_ inside of her the entire time, and she had nurtured it into what it was now.

And not only that… She shuddered at the thought, shoving it away.

“Tamiel killed my mom,” Claire finally said slowly, taking a seat beside Jody and looking at her hands. “My real mom… Right before I arrived here, I was looking for my mom. She’d gone missing since I was a kid, and I thought I would look for her when I got a hint that she was still alive,” she described. “And I found her. She was being held prisoner by this angel that was feeding off her life source. And…he tried to kill me. But my mom – she saved me.” Claire’s voice cracked, the memories flooding through her once again and she took a deep breath before she continued. “And then I killed him with his own sword.”

There was a silence before Jody spoke. “Is that the angel sword you carry around?”

Claire nodded without looking up.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Jody said gently, and it made Claire want to burst into tears and rail at the world for being so unfair, but she swallowed it down and kept silent. Jody wrapped her arm around her shoulder, and Claire let herself lean into her warmth, desperately trying not to cry, though a tear escaped under her eyelid against her will, and she couldn’t stop herself from saying the next words.

“And now I’m just as bad as him,” she said, unable to stop even though she felt the pressure building in her throat. “I – a part of his grace is _inside_ of me. It’s not even his grace anymore – it’s mine, and that means a part of me was the part that killed my mom. How can I –” She cut herself off, a fresh wave of tears cascading down her cheeks and she covered her eyes and sobbed.

“Claire,” Jody began softly, but Claire wasn’t done yet.

“And then Kaia. I _failed_ her in every single way, but this time…this time… Anael said –” She could almost see Kaia in that forest again, staring up at Claire through lifeless eyes, blood trailing from her wound onto the grass beneath her. And now Claire could also see something else: her grace, the Grigori –

She didn’t want to think about it anymore. Collapsing forward towards Jody’s body, she sobbed freely while Jody wrapped her arms around her. Vaguely, she could hear Jody telling her that it was all right, and that she didn’t have to go through this all on her own, but Claire couldn’t stop seeing Kaia, lying on the ground helplessly, and then her mom, taking a blow meant for Claire, and her dad, grabbing her hand and telling Castiel to let Claire go, to take him instead.

The dream came back to her again, Kaia sitting on the other side of the rowboat in the middle of a peaceful lake. _Do you ever want to be normal?_

_Yes!_ Claire wanted to yell out. _I wish that angels, and demons, and monsters had never come into our lives._

But is that really what you want? a selfish voice asked her.

There was knocking on that door that drew Claire out of her thought, and she pulled away from Jody, taking a slow inhale to calm herself, sniffling and rubbing her eyes vigorously even though she knew that her blotchy face would be a dead giveaway.

“Just a minute,” Jody called out. She turned back to Claire and offered her a small smile, which Claire tried to return. “If you ever need to talk to somebody, just know that I’m here for you, and so is everyone else.” She got up, squeezing Claire’s shoulder.

“Thanks,” Claire mumbled, but she could feel a warmth growing in her heart that began its work of pushing away the negative feelings.

Jody opened the door, and the same red-haired white woman that Claire didn’t know was standing there. “Hey,” she greeted cheerily. “Alex thinks she found something, and we’re all waiting to debrief about it.” She glanced inside the room, and she froze when she took in Claire’s face.

“It’s cool,” Claire managed to say. “Just expressing my feelings.”

The woman nodded, seeming satisfied with the reply.

Jody put her hands on her hips. “You guys haven’t met yet, but why don’t you go with Claire to grab some food in the kitchen first? I’m sure she’s hungry, aren’t you, Claire?”

She was giving Claire a way out of showing up in front of everyone else in the condition she was in, and for that, she was glad. She knew the others weren’t going to judge her for it – with the exception of Rowena, maybe – but she wasn’t comfortable showing up and looking like she just cried an entire lake. “Yeah, sure,” she said gratefully, and Jody gave her a comforting smile before she left.

“I’m Charlie,” the woman said with a smile, holding her hand out for a handshake. Claire stared for a second before she reached out and shook her hand.

“Claire,” she replied. “So, Jody know you or something?” she asked, cutting to the chase.

“Or something,” Charlie confirmed, but she didn’t specify. They began heading down to the kitchen, and Claire could see the others beginning to gather in the living room, and she looked away in case any of them caught sight of her face. “I’m actually travelling with Rowena.”

She looked sharply over at the other woman. “You’re a witch too?”

Charlie laughed and shook her head. “Nope. Just a regular ol’ human.” She hesitated for a second before she said the next words. “But…well… Promise you won’t call me a liar?”

“I can’t guarantee it,” Claire answered honestly, but she was intrigued about what Charlie had to say. “But go on.”

Charlie paused for a second before she spoke. “I’m not actually from this world. Well, I am, but I’m not _me_ from here.” When Claire proceeded to stare blankly at her, she elaborated. “The Rift opens to many different worlds,” she said. “I came from one of them – the one where humanity was at war with angels.”

“Wait, what?”

Charlie nodded. “Yep. Seems kind of strange, looking at your situation now, with those two angels and now you.” Charlie shrugged. “The point is, I just want to say that I’ve come to realize not everything is good or bad. Even in my world, where things were kind of obvious.” She was rummaging through the fridge now. “Do you want food or something to drink?”

“Something to drink’s fine. But why are you telling me this. About good and bad?” Claire asked her, leaning against the counter next to the fridge.

“I dunno. It just felt appropriate.” She tossed Claire a bottle of iced tea, which Claire caught a little ungracefully. “But I wanted to say that having that angel grace being part of you – it’s doesn’t change who you are.”

Claire stared down at her bottle in her hand. “Yeah, I guess so,” she said.

“Anyways,” Charlie said, closing the fridge. “Me and Rowena came here to help you guys solve the issue with the Rift, since she’s kind of the expert on it, and I’m kind of familiar with it. So how about we head on out to see what they’re talking about?”

She was giving Claire a warm smile, and not for the first time, Claire was glad that she was surrounded by so many supportive people. “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Charlie’s grin got wider, and they walked side by side to the living room where everyone else was. Rowena was lounging in her usual seat, sipping pleasantly on another cup of tea while Donna, Jody, and Alex sat on the couch beside her. The angels stood behind Patience, who was sitting on the single chair across from Rowena, and she didn’t look too happy about the arrangement, glancing backwards every once in a while like she thought they were going to strangle her at a moment’s notice.

“You’re here,” Anael noted. “I was just about to share what I told you earlier,” she said, and Claire swallowed down her fear.

Ever since the revelation that it was Tamiel’s grace that was residing inside of her, the others had departed to do some research on Grigoris. Even Dumah, who supposedly possessed most of heaven’s knowledge, said that she was unfamiliar with the topic. Grigoris were old and ancient, and they had been cast out from heaven since before most angels could remember. And now they were sifting through the research they had found, trying to figure out Claire’s powers even though she didn’t really feel like she had any despite the negative feelings that had arisen since her discovery of Tamiel’s grace.

“It’s the soul that the Collector of spirits is looking for,” Claire said, wanting to say it in her own words instead of hearing Anael’s. “Grigoris… They thrive off human energy. They induce a human under their spell and spend years draining them,” she said, thinking back to when she finally found her mother after all those years.

“Kind of like vampires,” Alex mused, and the irony wasn’t lost on Claire. “But I found something similar – there’s an old story about Grigoris: a human managed to kill a Grigori that was hunting in their village, but soon after he began to murder other people until he was sentenced to death for his crimes. Moral of the story, don’t kill angels, no matter how evil they are,” Alex described with a grimace, and Claire thought Charlie made a noise that sounded like a muffled laugh.

“Sounds like power absorption,” Rowena piped in. Claire nodded, even though the tale Alex told her wasn’t making her feel any better about what she was going to reveal.

“That’s what happens when the killer of a Grigori comes from a line of angel vessels,” she began, forcing her breathing to remain steady. “I – when I killed Tamiel with his sword – I must have absorbed some of his grace.”

“The angel sword is the source of a Grigori’s energy when they kill their prey,” Anael explained. “I’m not sure how it works exactly, but I do know one thing…”

“That I absorbed his grace when I killed him,” Claire finished. She took a shaky breath before she continued. “And then, when… When Kaia died, something happened. I didn’t kill her but –”

“A Grigori’s grace feeds on dying humans,” Dumah answered, her eyes lighting up in understanding. “The soul that the Collector was looking for is the girl – Kaia’s?”

Claire nodded without looking up. She didn’t want to see everyone’s expressions now that they knew she was the only who had consumed Kaia’s spirit. It wasn’t only the Collector’s fault for killing her. Tamiel’s grace – no, _Claire’s_ grace – had hastened her death just by being in proximity. “I helped to killed Kaia,” she admitted miserably. “Anael explained it all. The grace inside of me had pieces of a soul it consumed. It was recent enough for Anael to figure out whose soul it was.”

“It’s not your fault,” Donna said immediately, standing up from her seat and walking up to Claire. “You didn’t kill anybody.” Claire wanted to protest, even though she knew that she was starting to overreact, but the fact that her grace had absorbed Kaia’s soul didn’t sit well with her – and all those dreams and the djinn world where Kaia seemed so real and tangible – was it really Kaia? Was it really fragments of Kaia’s soul, who was stuck and tangled within Claire’s Grigori grace?

She must have spoken out loud because Charlie put a hand on her shoulder. “There’s only one way to find out,” she said in a tone that made Claire wonder if Charlie was ever in a position of leadership because for a second, Claire was almost convinced that Charlie had a plan to solve the entire issue with the Collector and expel Claire’s angel grace at the same time. She looked at Claire with a determination that made her feel unsteady. “We have to talk to Kaia ourselves.”

“What?” Patience yelped, jumping up in her seat. “But Claire said so herself – her grace is in the process of consuming Kaia’s soul. Look, I don’t know too much about how souls work, but it doesn’t sound promising.”

Charlie shook her head. “I’m not talking about that part,” Charlie said. “I meant that we should talk to the flesh and blood Kaia.” Patience opened her mouth again to protest, but Charlie put her palm up. “Let me explain,” she said. “The Collector of spirits must want Kaia’s soul for a reason, as mangled as it might be,” Charlie said carefully, and Claire tried not to show her displeasure of Charlie’s choice of words. “And I’m not saying this to get your hopes up, but maybe, just _maybe_ Kaia’s still in there, just like she still lives in Claire’s grace. ‘Collector of spirits’ and all. And if we can manage to free her –”

“The chances of the girl being alive is quite low,” Dumah cut in without preamble. She had her arms crossed around her chest, and from her narrowed eyes, she didn’t look very happy about Charlie’s wild hypothesis. “It’s dangerous to approach Death, especially one that does not belong to this world, and our goal should be to drive them back to the world they reside in. The best we can do is to find out how to extract Kaia’s soul from Claire’s and return it back to the Collector.”

There was silence for a moment while the group dwelled on the two ideas.

“But,” Claire found herself saying despite knowing the fact that Dumah’s plan was more practical than Charlie’s, “if there’s even a chance that Kaia might be alive…” She stopped herself from saying more, waiting to hear Jody or Donna’s gentle assertion that Kaia was dead and gone, and Claire should know better of all people, having seen Kaia’s death herself – having _taken_ parts of Kaia’s soul herself, but it didn’t come.

Instead, Rowena was the one who spoke up. “Well, I don’t see why not,” she commented airily. “Besides, the girl is right. It’s never black and white with these things. Your friend could be alive, and if not, it wouldn’t be so bad to move her on to the afterlife, don’t you say? Besides, I have a feeling that extracting bits and pieces of someone’s soul from a Grigori’s parasitic grace no less – no offense, Claire – would be quite difficult, even for someone like me to figure out.”

For the first time, Claire was comforted by Rowena’s presence in the matter of things. Jody and Donna looked grim at the thought of following up on Charlie’s advice, but any protests seemed to have given way to thoughtful consideration of the plan.

“You can’t draw the Collector out on your own,” Dumah continued, still unhappy with the proposed idea. “And they’ll show up with their hoard of demons. The Collector won’t come defenseless.”

“Well, we’ll see about that,” Rowena said with a smile. “Some demons, especially the follower kind, are incredibly stupid. Believe me. It wouldn’t be too hard to trap them. Now as for luring out the Collector themselves…”

She flicked her wrist and held the flat of her palm facing up. There was a glow of purple, and Claire felt like something was tugging on her chest – it was the same feeling that had drawn her towards Anael, a fellow angel, in the very beginning. Except this time, she knew what she was being drawn to.

An familiar angel blade much longer than any other blade appeared in Rowena’s hand out of thin air, and she smiled at it. With a cup in one hand and Claire’s angel sword in the other, Claire could almost believe that she really was the mother of a king of hell. She smiled at them like she had shown them nothing more than a funny parlour trick. “I had planned to keep this,” she mused, looking at the blade with regret. “It showed up when Anael was busy investigating your grace, mind you. You seemed to have called it forth without even realizing. But,” she said, putting down her cup and extending her hand with the sword over toward Claire. “After some deliberation, I’m sure the Collector is looking for this, and I certainly have other plans after this. So, consider this yours again.”

Claire reached out gingerly, half expecting Rowena to swing the blade and cut her in two. Instead, Rowena pulled her hand back, just out of Claire’s fingertips.

“Ah-ah,” she said, waggling her index finger at her. “What say I return the sword to you _and_ help you capture the Collector?”

“That was the plan,” Claire said with a frown. She wasn’t sure what Rowena was trying to say, but she didn’t like the mischievous expression on the witch’s face.

“Great plan indeed,” she agreed. “But I don’t do things without a price.”

Jody immediately stood up. “Whatever you’re thinking of –”

Rowena dismissed Jody’s words with a flick of her hand. “Oh, calm down,” she scoffed. “I wasn’t going to ask for something outrageous. Who do you take me for?” She turned to look at Claire, and Claire felt like there was an ice cube sliding down her back, suddenly aware of the subtle power that Rowena was emulating, like there was a soft glow of light surrounding her body. “I was thinking that if I ever need something, you could help out,” she offered with a cat-like smile.

“So I’ll be in your debt,” Claire said, and Rowena’s smile widened in affirmation. She didn’t like the sound of it, and Rowena hadn’t specified what her payment would look like, but at this point, she was probably the only one in the room who knew exactly how to lure out the Collector. The angels in the room certainly weren’t perking up with any other options she could take.

“Claire,” Donna began, but Claire nodded.

“Okay, it’s a deal then.”

She saw the way that Jody’s mouth pulled into a firm line, but she didn’t comment, and Claire hoped that she hadn’t dug her own grave.

“Perfect,” Rowena said. “Well then, first step is the sword.” She held the sword forward again, and Claire reached out for it.

She grabbed the hilt of the sword, and it felt almost warm under her fingertips, like it was singing in homecoming. She shuddered, feeling a sting go down her back, and she wondered if this is what being aware of her grace felt like. The sword had always felt right in her hands, but now… It felt almost like it was calling to her soul – no, her _grace_.

She almost dropped the sword in fear, but she bit the inside of her cheek and toughed out the feeling. Tamiel’s grace was now hers and hers alone, she told herself. And despite all the horrible things that Tamiel had done, it was now Claire’s turn with the Grigori grace, and she’d be damned if she didn’t try to do something to make it up to Kaia’s fragmented soul. She couldn’t fail her again. Holding the sword tightly in her hands, she turned and looked at her family.

“Whatever happened with Kaia, I have to save her – the parts of her that are left,” Claire said, feeling determined now. Witch deal or not, she knew what her mission was. “And to do that, I’m going to kill the Collector of spirits.”

 

iv.

Claire hugged her jacket closer around herself, shivering in the chilliness of the spring evening. The park was absolutely deserted, and she was grateful for that. The last thing she needed was someone calling in to report that she was walking around with a gleaming sword strapped to the side of her leg.

She was sure that this was going to lure the Collector out. Rowena had promised that she had set up some spells nearby to draw the Collector’s attention, and now Claire was playing bait with the angel sword. But minutes had passed, and the Collector still hadn’t shown up.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Claire had asked when she first entered the empty park with Rowena.

“Oh, positive,” the witch had replied. “Jody was a little uppity about the two of us going off alone, but I assure you that any more than the two of us? We have no chance. Death isn’t stupid, even in other dimensions.”

“How do you know so much about this?” Claire had demanded.

“Oh, a little research and connections gets you a lot in very little time,” Rowena had said, shrugging it off. “And I’m a witch, remember?”

Like Claire could forget _that_ detail.

And now she was standing in the darkness waiting for Death to show up so she could capture them.

She was about to pull Rowena out of her hiding place and ask again if she was sure that this would work, when she felt a chilling presence behind her. She turned around just to see a crack of orange light tear open in the air. She watched the rip tear wider, and a cloaked figure leap out, landing in the grass with a soft thud. They removed their hood, revealing Kaia’s face under the glow of the pale moonlight.

“Are you ready to return what you have stolen?” the Collector asked using Kaia’s voice, surprisingly gentle like Claire and Kaia were sharing a romantic walk under the night sky. Claire pushed away those feelings, focusing on the task at hand. All she had to do was draw them out, she thought to herself. And now she had to get out of the way.

“Not really,” Claire said with a smile, and then she jumped to the side just as Rowena shouted a spell from far behind her. She landed facedown in the dirt, quickly getting up and turning around to see that Rowena had already started the binding spell. Flashes of purple-like lightning streaks hurled towards Kaia’s body. By the way that Kaia’s body was arched back, it looked like she was feeling the effects of the binding spell. Rowena lifted her hands up higher and the lightning followed her, lifting Kaia’s body off the ground and into the air. Claire was about to thank Rowena when she noticed the beads of sweat running down her face, illuminated by the dim glow of her spell.

“Hurry!” Rowena called to Claire, and Claire nodded, fumbling in her pocket for the pouch that Rowena had packed ahead of time – a teleportation spell with an anchor in Jody’s home, she had been told, but it had to be activated in order to work. She ran beside Rowena and held the pouch out to her, but Rowena shook her head.

“This spell is taking too much energy,” Rowena said with effort. “You’ll have to start it yourself.”

“What? But I’m not a witch!”

Rowena shook her head. “Your grace. A pinch of angel grace –” She broke off and collapsed on one knee, and Claire knelt over her. She shook her head again. “You have to hurry!”

She could understand in theory what Rowena was talking about, but she had no idea how to tap into the angel grace that resided inside of her. If anything, it had only shown up to absorb Kaia’s soul, but Claire hadn’t felt her grace stirring inside of her during that encounter. Nonetheless, she closed her eyes, kneeling beside Rowena, one hand on Rowena’s shoulder and the other cupping the pouch. She thought back to Castiel, when he was possessing her body and the sliver of grace that she felt tracing through her entire body. She thought to Anael, standing in front of the cowering demon with her palm lowering onto the demon’s forehead, and she tried to channel that kind of light forward – imagining herself encased with the alien blue glow of an angel’s.

She opened her eyes and stared at the pouch in her hands, and she realized that it wasn’t working. Rowena was crouched over with her hands still emitting the spell – looking like she was in pain, and Kaia’s body was slowly being lowered back onto the ground. They were running out of time, and Claire couldn’t do it. She couldn’t control this grace, no matter what she thought.

A gleam caught her eye and she looked down at the sword that was strapped to her leg. Every blade is crafted from angel’s grace, she remembered. This had to work – it just had to.

With her hand still on Rowena’s shoulder, she jabbed the pouch at the sharp end of the sword and pierced through it, shutting her eyes and hoping that she didn’t just destroy their only chance of returning.

Instead of the innards falling out of the pouch onto the ground uselessly, there was a sickening turn like someone had flipped Claire upside down before she was righted again, and she landed in the middle of the living room. She nearly fell over from the vertigo.

Rowena and the Collector had appeared too, but without the binding spell. Now free, the Collector glared at Claire and Rowena, taking a step forward. “You…” they began, but they were cut off when Rowena blasted another spell at them – this time a short spark that landed in the center of Kaia’s chest, causing them to stop mid-sentence with widened eyes, and collapse onto the ground.

“You didn’t kill them, did you?” Patience said, and Claire turned to see that she was standing behind a couch like it was going to protect her, gripping onto its back tightly. Dumah was standing beside her with an unreadable expression on her face, but there was no one else in the room at present.

“They’re fine,” Rowena said with a huff, like it had been nothing more than a particularly difficult exercise. “I hadn’t expected them to be this resistant, but it’s been done. And now for the final part.”

They had discussed this in their plans, but now that Claire was looking down at Kaia’s prone body, she wasn’t sure if she could do it. Charlie’s words were failing her now, and while she hoped against all possibility that Kaia was in there somewhere, she didn’t know if she could believe it to be true. The thing inhabiting her body now was Kaia’s killer, not Kaia. And if they were wrong about Kaia’s soul being trapped inside – then Claire would have to confront the Collector head on without any backup.

Dumah must have heard her thoughts, because she sighed audibly. “I’ll go with you,” she said, even though she had shown her displeasure the entire time they had devised this new plan. Hearing the words, Claire was achingly reminded of the time she had promise to keep Kaia safe in the Bad Place. “If something happens, I should be able to navigate you out easily.”

Claire nodded, accepting Dumah’s offer. “Okay,” she said after exhaling in an attempt to rid her anxiety. “So now that that’s figured out, how do I get inside her dreams? I don’t just fall asleep and hope we meet, right?” She felt jittery – both at the idea that she might meet Kaia again and know that she was real this time, and also at the idea that she might only meet the Collector of spirits in there, who would assure her that Kaia was completely dead if not for the pieces now swirling around in her Grigori grace.

She shook the thoughts out of her head. There was only one way to find this out: she would have to enter the Collector’s mind and step into their dreams.

“Don’t worry, I’ve already got a spell worked up,” Rowena said. “This is fairly easy to make. All you need is a little African Dream Root, and a bit of her DNA, and the rest is easy.” Dumah helped to lift Kaia’s body onto the couch, lying her on her back and closing her eyes. At this view, Claire could almost pretend that Kaia was dead – really dead and uninhabited by a powerful entity.

Rowena plucked a strand of hair off Kaia’s head and held it over a cup she had prepared, chanting something under her breath and letting the follicle dissolve into the drink. Claire suddenly didn’t feel so ready to take a sip out of that thing, but Rowena held it out to her. She glanced over at Dumah. “What about her?”

“I’m an angel,” Dumah said. “I don’t need spells to enter your dreams.”

So that meant that Claire was going to be the only one drinking that thing. Sitting down on one of the chairs, Claire accepted the cup, feeling like she was going to drop it by accident. She looked over at Kaia’s body, heart thudding painfully in her chest, and she wasn’t so sure of herself anymore. It would be easier to accept that Kaia was completely gone rather than hold onto the impossible hope that she was still in there somewhere – and that Claire might have a chance to really talk to her again before she passed on.

She held the cup to her mouth and stared into the repulsive yellow liquid. She made a face, plugging her nose and then chugged it all down quickly. She scrunched up her face and waiting for the unpleasantness of the drink to kick in.

“Remember,” she heard Rowena saying, and it sounded like it was coming from the back of her head. “If you die in your dreams, you die in real life.”

If Claire had any second thoughts about it, it was definitely too late for a warning now. She felt a sudden wave hit her in the head, and she gasped, choking on the remnants of the liquid in her throat, bending over and coughing at the floor until she felt like she could breathe again.

And then she realized that she was no longer in Jody’s living room.

The space had morphed into a dimly lit cobblestone hallway, the floor speckled with dirt and dust from neglect. Rows of secluded cells lined the hall, all closed off with a familiar set of solid iron bars. Claire recognized this sight: it was hell, exactly the way she remembered it.

And standing right in front of her, staring through unreadable eyes, was Kaia Nieves.


	4. Act Four

ACT FOUR

The Mountain of Sorrow

 

i.

Claire took a step back, her heart crashing against her chest. She was dreamwalking right now – really dreamwalking, and this had to be either a manifestation of the Collector or Charlie was right, and this was another piece of Kaia’s soul. She her hand to her side, looking for the familiar touch of her angel sword, but it wasn’t there.

“Claire,” Kaia said. “You’re here.”

“What are you talking about?” Claire prompted, trying to figure out if this was really Kaia or just another one of the Collector’s tricks.

Kaia was frowning at Claire’s question, and she squinted at her like she was thinking hard about the answer. She shook her head with dismay. “I…don’t remember.”

“Is it really you?” Claire asked again. “Are you really Kaia?”

In retrospect, it might not have been the smartest thing to ask since the Collector could have easily lied and said that they were Kaia, but when Kaia nodded hesitantly, looking somewhat confused, Claire’s hopes soared.

Claire was trying to think of something else that she could ask when someone put their hand on her shoulder. She jolted in surprise and realized that Dumah was now standing beside her. The angel didn’t have her angel blade out, but she was narrowing her eyes at Kaia like she was ready to eliminate the threat at any second. “I would caution against revealing too much,” she said quietly. “This could be the Collector in disguise.”

She clamped her mouth shut to keep from objecting. Though the woman standing in front of her looked and sounded like Kaia, she already knew from experience that she could be anything but. Her confirmation could have just been a lie, she told herself, but even Dumah’s warning couldn’t stop the budding hope that was springing up in her chest.

Kaia seemed to have looked past the little mishap and nodded in the direction behind her, where the shadowy hallway stretched on into an indiscernible darkness. “Come with me,” she said, looking at Claire. She turned around and started walking, not looking to see if she was following. Claire exchanged a glance with Dumah before she ran to catch up.

In the empty hallway, their footsteps were the only sound that echoed through the room, and there was a chill lingering in the air the further along they walked. For a dream, Claire thought while she rubbed her hands over her cold arms, it certainly felt real. Just like the djinn dream that felt like so long ago. She thought back to Rowena’s warning about dying, and suddenly the realness of the dream didn’t feel like such a unique novelty anymore.

They had now reached the end where a large, dark wooden door loomed in front of them. Kaia pushed the door with both hands, and it opened with a loud creak that made Claire grit her teeth and press one hand against her ears. Now that the door was wide open, Claire could see that the path continued: stairs led in a spiral downwards, dimly lit by a warm glow from further below.

Claire was hoping that they didn’t have to go down there to investigate the light source, but of course, Kaia looked at her expectantly and said, “We have to go downstairs.”

Swallowing her protests, she didn’t say a word while Kaia took the lead, walking down the steps with such an air of assuredness that Claire had to wonder if this was all a trap, and she and Dumah were willingly walking into it.

Dumah must have sensed her reluctance. “If anything happens, I’ll help pull you out of this dream.”

It wasn’t too reassuring, but Claire took the support anyways. “Thanks,” she muttered and continued following Kaia’s footsteps. The light got brighter the deeper they went, and when they turned around the last spiral, Claire realized just where the light was coming from.

At the very bottom, it opened up to a circular room completely encased by cement. It would have been completely bare if not for the light source in the center of the room – a jagged line like a rip in the air of orange-yellow light gleaming so brightly in the darkness that it hurt to look at. The Rift.

She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t expected to see the Rift, but Claire balked at the sight of it. She couldn’t forget how she looked for the portal for months only to have it show up unannounced with a horde of demons in toll. And now here it was again, like it was taunting her for failing Kaia in the Bad Place all those months ago.

Kaia turned and looked at Claire, their eyes meeting for a brief second before Kaia turned around again. She placed her hand on the opening of the Rift, and then she instantly disappeared.

“Wait!” Claire shouted, running forward the last few steps, but she was already gone. She was about to reach for the Rift when a strong pair of fingers grabbed her by the arm.

“This is dangerous!” Dumah hissed, yanking her backwards so roughly that she nearly fell over. “That’s the Rift – the _real_ Rift. If you go in there –”

“Then I’ll actually enter into a different dimension in real life,” Claire guessed. Dumah didn’t reply, but she didn’t loosen her grip on Claire’s arm, and she figured that she had hit the nail on the head. Kaia had told her before that her dreams were so real that she often woke up with real life wounds, and Claire figured that this was what she was talking about. She must have accessed the Rift while she was dreamwalking. And if this was really Kaia who had just gone through… Claire wrenched her arm away from Dumah and glared at the angel. “The whole point of this is to see if Kaia’s soul is still here and to release her if we find her, right? We know where she went, so let’s go.”

“We don’t know if it’s actually her or just a trick,” Dumah rebutted, and Claire had to give her the point. “We should turn back and find another way.”

She knew what Dumah was saying was reasonable, but there was something tugging Claire towards the Rift. The angel was staring at her fiercely, like she thought her sheer will could prevent Claire from jumping into the Rift, but Claire shook her head and took a step away from Dumah. She knew that Dumah could be right, and that she was being irrational about it, but she had to save Kaia this time, and she wasn’t taking any chances.

“I have to go through,” Claire insisted, and she reached out for the Rift before Dumah could stop her. She felt a jolt of heat go through her fingertips from where they brushed against the Rift, the warmth racing down her hand and through her entire body like an electric jolt. She blinked, and the scenery had changed before her very eyes: the cement walls were replaced by open air, and the bareness filled up by massive trees that stretched far into the sky. Everything had a strange bluish tint, like it was being lit up behind a cool light.

She was back in the Bad Place, after so many months of useless searching.

And that was when she noticed Kaia’s body sprawled on the floor a few feet away from the Rift.

Claire dashed over, her heartbeat pounding in her chest. She wasn’t sure what could have happened in the few seconds that she spent arguing with Dumah, but the scene seemed…familiar somehow. Shaking away the thought, Claire approached Kaia’s body, kneeling down to check if she was breathing.

She pulled her hand away when she had counted to ten and not a single breath had exited Kaia’s lungs. She slumped down, a cold despair beginning to grip her heart until she realized exactly why this scene was so familiar. She remembered now: the way Kaia’s legs were tangled over each other in death and her hand pressing against the wound in her stomach.

This was Kaia’s body – her body from when she died here months ago. She looked just like the day she died, minus the blood, her face twisted in an expression of pain and peacefulness.

“I’m sorry,” Claire whispered, feeling like a healing wound had been cut up and exposed. She reached out touch Kaia’s cold hand, but she jerked it back when Kaia’s body began to vanish into thin air. Within seconds, she was gone, like there was nothing there in the first place. She blinked a few times, staring at the spot where Kaia once was, standing up slowly and trying to process what just happened.

“What’s wrong?” Dumah had appeared beside her, having crossed the Rift. She didn’t look very happy about being forced to come along to what she deemed a dangerous place, and while Claire understood that angels didn’t have any obligation to her, she was glad to have Dumah’s support during the entire ordeal.

“Nothing,” Claire said, looking away. It was then that she noticed that Kaia’s figure was far ahead of them. She glanced at the ground where Kaia’s body was and then back to the girl in the distance, wondering if she had somehow morphed over there.

But no, Claire thought, that must be the Kaia they followed through the Rift. The Kaia on the ground… That must have been an illusion from the Bad Place. Dumah pointed at Kaia, who had now stopped and was waving them over. “Let’s go.”

Claire nodded in agreement and ran to catch up to Kaia, not wanting to think about the body that was just sprawled on the ground. It brought back bad memories that Claire wasn’t too excited about reliving. She caught up to Kaia in the clearing, the massive trees parting in a tiny opening where the perpetually dim sky granted them audience.

“There,” Kaia said once Claire and Dumah had reached the clearing. She pointed up ahead to the distance in front of them, and for a moment, Claire thought it was the same giant that loomed in front of them when she first escaped the Bad Place. On a closer inspect though, Claire noted that it wasn’t the giant but rather a larger shadow of a mountain with a flat top. “We have to go there.”

Claire bit her lip, reminded of the djinn dream when Kaia kept insisting to go to the bottom of the lake in the same firm tone. This was the same thing as the lake, though for some reason, Claire didn’t feel the same sense of dread wash over her at Kaia’s words. “Why?” she questioned Kaia.

Kaia frowned for a second, like she was trying to remember again. “We just have to,” she said, turning to look at Claire pleadingly. Then she glanced beside her like she was seeing Dumah for the first time. She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, and Claire could feel that she was tensing up, trying to gauge whether Dumah was an enemy or a friend.

“She’s with me,” Claire said, and Kaia nodded, seeming a little reassured by that but not completely relaxed yet.

“It’s most likely that her soul is trapped up there,” Dumah mused, crossing her arms, seeming unaffected by Kaia’s hard stare.

“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kaia cut in, and Claire was becoming more and more convinced that this really was Kaia. She was beginning to sound everything like Claire remembered: a little unsure of herself but with a distinctive defiant streak that rang clear in her words. “All I know is that I’ve been trying to reach the top for a while now, but every time I reach a certain point, I start all over in the dungeons again,” she explained. “But maybe this time will be different with you here,” she said, looking pointedly at Claire.

When Claire didn’t immediately jump in excitement at Kaia’s offer, Kaia deflated, her shoulders slumping in disappointment. “You don’t trust me,” Kaia guessed. “You think I’m going to trick you – that I’m part of the Bad Place.”

Her guess wasn’t off-mark, and Claire wanted to protest, but Dumah spoke first. “You led us here,” she said, and Claire could feel the tension rolling off the angel. “How do we know you’re not going to try and kill us the first chance you get?”

Kaia’s mouth was pulled into a defiant line. “I won’t,” she said firmly. “I want to be here even less than you, trust me. And you were the ones who showed up suddenly when I woke up. If you want to go back, then that’s fine. The portal is still open.” She crossed her arms around her chest and took a step back like she was about to make a dash into the woods where they couldn’t follow.

Claire knew that Dumah would agree to turn back while they could, but despite all the warning of danger, there was a part deep inside of her that told her to trust this that this really was Kaia. After all, she did apparently carry pieces of Kaia’s soul inside of her soul-grace hybrid. She figured that the intuition had to count for something.

“I’m not leaving,” Claire said, giving both Kaia and Dumah a challenging look. Neither of them argued, but she could almost feel Dumah’s annoyance. “Kaia, if you feel like we’re able to help you reach the top in any way, then I’ll go with you.” She almost winced at her unfortunate choice of words, but if it resonated with Kaia, she didn’t let on. Instead, she looked relieved, her shoulders softening in an exhale.

And then they heard it: a distant howl that pierced through the perpetual night-day of the Bad Place. Claire felt a chill enter into her body, the coldness spreading from her extremities until it reached the center of her chest. She glanced over at Kaia to see that she was stock-still, her eyes wide and one of her hands gripped tightly onto her wrist like she was trying to scratch it. Neither of them could forget this sound: it was the things that hunted Kaia back when they first met. She could remember Kaia’s words even now: _those things – they travel in packs. They pick up your scent…and they don’t stop_.

Dumah muttered something under her breath, and she unsheathe her weapon, the angel blade falling into the palm of her hand. Kaia eyed the weapon warily, shuffling backwards a bit. “I’ll handle this,” Dumah told them. “Since you insist on staying.” She made it sound like it was Claire’s fault, and Claire had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from reminding Dumah that she was the one who offered to come anyway. She knew that the angel’s main priority was eliminating the Collector of spirits from their world and that Dumah thought that this was just a bothersome detour, but Claire had to help Kaia – the real Kaia.

“Thanks,” Claire told her, surprisingly without using an antagonizing tone. “I’ll follow Kaia.”

“Then I’ll bring up the rear and remove the monsters on your trail,” Dumah agreed. She turned to give Kaia one last look before she walked off in the direction where the howl came from.

“Is it really okay?” Kaia asked Claire, staring at Dumah’s retreating back. “Those things –”

“She’ll be fine,” Claire said, turning the opposite direction from Dumah. Though Claire had her grievances recently with Dumah, she had to remind herself that she was an angel of the Lord, just like Anael. And whether she was cut off from heaven or not, Claire knew that angels could still pack a punch. She wasn’t too concerned about Dumah, though her departure did make Claire feel a little uneasy about navigating the Bad Place.

She looked at Kaia, who seemed to have retreated in the sweater she was wearing and was eyeing Claire with something that looked like distrust, and Claire felt a pang of hurt go through her. She couldn’t forget how she failed Kaia all those months ago, and she didn’t expect Kaia to forget it either, if this was really her.

“You said we had to get up to the peak, right?” Claire asked her. “So let’s get going.”

 

ii.

The path through the forest opened up beneath them, the undergrowth giving way to a small dirt path that continued along in a straight line. Claire followed behind Kaia, who following the path without a moment of hesitation, and she couldn’t help but think that it was Kaia who had trodden this path so often that she had left a road that led the way.

Despite being potentially reunited with Kaia, Claire didn’t know what to say to her. Every time she thought about apologizing, the words would die down in her throat, and Kaia never turned around once or said anything. Claire decided it was probably best to just continue walking behind her silently, keeping an eye out for dangers that might leap out from the bushes. Dumah must have been doing a good job because Claire didn’t hear anything that signed of monsters for the next hour that Claire walked.

She wasn’t sure how far away the mountain was from where they were, but she had a feeling that it was still quite a ways away. Back in the clearing, the mountain was just a slightly darker shadow against the background, and Claire hoped that they wouldn’t have to keep walking for days, even though she wasn’t complaining yet.

The silence between them stretched on, and there was no other sound except for the soft rustle of leaves against the breeze and their footsteps tromping on the dirt path beneath them. Claire took in the scenery around them now that she was no longer in a rush like the last time they were here. Everything had a strange dark tint to it, like it wasn’t being lit properly by the sunlight, and the trees were massive in structure – growing so high up that she could barely see the tops of them. They were completely encased by foliage above them, the dark sunlight streaming through in the space between the leaves, offering a miniscule amount of light to pierce the darkness, though it didn’t do much to illuminate the place. The longer Claire spent walking through this place, the colder she felt, and she longed to feel the sunlight – her world’s sunlight – against her skin.

They must have walked on for hours, but the landscape all seemed the same to Claire. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think that they were getting further and further away from the destination. She was staring at the dirt path, trying to figure out how many times Kaia had stridden the same road when Kaia stopped so suddenly that Claire bumped right into her. She muttered an apology, her heartbeat racing at the contact, but Kaia didn’t say anything. She only pointed at a structure off the path further down.

“Let’s rest for the night over there,” Kaia said, and Claire scrunched up her face. Night? The sky hadn’t indicated any time had passed, though Claire’s legs were starting to feel sore from all the walking. When they got closer to the spot that Kaia had been pointing to, Claire noticed that there was a makeshift lean-to. Hidden in the sudden burst of undergrowth, Claire could have easily mistaken it for an extraordinarily large bush if Kaia hadn’t indicated to it. The lean-to was comprised of the thinner branches found on the lower trunks of the tree, and there were plants growing alongside it, like it was trying to hide the lean-to from plain sight.

“There should be some food,” Kaia muttered when they approached it, digging through and sighing when she couldn’t find anything. “I’ll be nearby,” Kaia told her, heading off through the woods alone before Claire could stop her.

Claire sighed, staring off where Kaia went for a moment and then chasing after her. It was unwise to go separate ways in such a dangerous place, and Claire didn’t want to lose sight of her.

And there was still the small possibility that this wasn’t actually Kaia, a small logical voice said, though Claire dismissed it. She hadn’t come so far just to give up hope. And there was a tiny part of Claire’s heart that ached when they got too close, and while Claire would have been embarrassed to admit this previously, it had to mean something, she thought to herself.

Claire followed Kaia silently while she trampled through the underbrush, head bent low like she was looking for something. Finally, she let out a small noise of triumph, and Claire approached to see that she was picking what appeared to be small, pale berries from a bush. “I usually rely on these when I come down this path,” Kaia explained, her head still bent over while she plucked the berries. “At least I know these aren’t poisonous. Here, have some.”

She turned around and placed some berries in Claire’s open palm, and Claire stared at them for a second. They were rounded like blueberries, but the pale moon colour gave the impression that they didn’t taste anything like blueberries. She took one from the pile in her hand and put it into her mouth, biting down the juicy center of the berry.

It was flavourless, and Claire swallowed down the berry with a relative ease, though she wasn’t looking forward to having any more. “Is there any water nearby?” she asked Kaia.

“Further ahead. There’s a creak nearby. It should be fine; I haven’t died from drinking it yet.”

With that, Kaia continued to forage, and Claire almost audibly sighed, stuffing the few berries carefully in the pocket of her jean jacket and continuing along. She could hear the faint sound of running water, and when she pushed past some a half-fallen branch of leaves, she was greeted with the sight of a brook no wider than a few feet continuing along until it disappeared into the distance. She dipped her hands into the cooler than usual water and nearly pulled back right away at the seemingly frigid temperatures. Shaking the hesitation off, she dipped her hand in the brook again, cupping her hand full of water and bringing it up to her face to sip it up. She wished that she had a container of some sort, but she hadn’t prepared in advance, having not known that she could go hungry or thirsty in a dream. Then again, she didn’t know that her actual soul-grace – whatever it was – could travel into another reality while within a dream, even though she wasn’t a dreamwalker.

She headed back after she’d had to fill only to find that Kaia was gone, though she had left visible tracks. Claire followed them and was quickly led back to the lean-to where they had stopped to rest, and she saw Kaia sitting down, looking into the distance where the dirt path stretched on.

“Aren’t you thirsty?” Claire asked, sitting down beside her. She crossed her legs, massaging the tender areas where she felt sore from the walking.

“Not really,” Kaia said, and then she turned to look at Claire, her expression indecipherable, and Claire was reminded of her first meeting with Kaia way back in the hospital room. “I just wanted to ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“Why are you so…tense around me? Is it the dreamwalking thing?” Kaia asked, and Claire could hear the hint of self-consciousness underneath the impassive tone.

“No,” Claire said, shaking her head. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

Claire paused, wondering if she should tell her. After all, Dumah was still suspicious that this wasn’t actually Kaia and that this could very likely be the Collector in disguise, waiting for the right moment to take Claire out. Though Claire had a hard time believing it at this point. If it was really the Collector of spirits, then they would have had plenty of time during the entire journey to get a jump on her. Not to mention that she would have been completely defenseless when she was by the brook drinking water. Besides, Claire had a feeling telling her that this was the real Kaia – and that she was lost and confused about the real situation happening outside of her dreamwalking.

“This is going to sound funny,” Claire began slowly, but Kaia cut her off.

“I’m dead,” she stated matter-of-factly. “I already know that. I felt it happen.”

Claire stared at her for a moment and lost for words for what to say at the moment. “I’m sorry,” Claire said when she finally found her voice again. She looked away from Kaia and down at her feet, suddenly noticing that she was sitting much too close to Kaia. “I…broke my promise.”

There was silence before Kaia spoke. “I chose to protect you,” she said evenly. “I chose to stop running…and I fought for once in my life. Just like you do.”

_And you paid with your life_ , Claire wanted to shout. _I wanted you to fight back, but not for it to end like this!_ Though she clamped her mouth shut and kept quiet, waiting for Kaia’s next words.

“What happened wasn’t you breaking your promise,” she said, letting out a soft exhale at the end of her sentence. “And I don’t hold any bad feelings over it. Actually, I’m kind of glad that there’s someone else here with me now, though I get the feeling that you’re not dead. Yet.” Kaia offered Claire a kind of shy smile over the morbid humor, just like they had so many months ago on that porch. Despite her feelings, Claire found herself smiling back before she forced herself to stop.

“Patience was wrong,” Claire told her, and she explained everything about Patience’s actual vision. It sounded embarrassing out loud – that Patience had actually seen Claire grieving for Kaia and not her death, though Kaia didn’t make any mocking commentary about it. She listened attentively, her eyebrows scrunched up in thought.

“So it was always me,” Kaia mused, and Claire had to give her points for not sounding even the slightest upset about the news. “But is that the reason why you’ve been distant? Because you didn’t want me to know that I’m dead?”

“No,” Claire answered truthfully. “The thing is… This is going to sound even weirder, trust me.”

“I think weird is a permanent fixture in our lives,” Kaia said, bringing a hand to her chin while she tilted her head to look at Claire. “What’s bothering you?”

It felt like that night on the porch all over again, except this time, Kaia was the one pulling the truth out of Claire. Claire sighed, looking down at her jeans and half-laughed, unable to look at Kaia. “I don’t know where to start,” she admitted after a moment of thought.

“At the beginning?” Kaia offered.

Claire nodded and took a deep breath again, flitting through her mind to the day that Kaia died. She started off slowly, explaining about her _obsession_ , as Alex had so aptly put it, about the Rift and revenge. And then she described falling into the djinn’s trap and being locked in an alternate universe. Though she left out the part where she was dating Kaia, she did describe how she felt that Kaia was always _real_ in that world. And then there came the tip about Anael, and heaven’s gates, which led them to meeting up with Dumah. She took a quick glance at Kaia, hoping that the whole angel thing wasn’t shocking her too much, but Kaia shrugged.

“Did I ever tell you I had angels come after me?” Kaia offered with a smile. “It was just before I met you guys. They kidnapped me and used me for bait. Can’t say I really trust angels.”

Claire let out of half-laugh. “Yeah, same thing with me,” she said. “My family – we come from a line of angel vessels. Creepy term, but it means that angels can possess us without combusting as long as they have our consent,” Claire said, the last word feeling like a joke on her tongue. She’d never really talked about this out loud, and something saying the words were relieving. She couldn’t stop herself from talking about it. “But it’s a bad deal in the end, for us humans. My dad – well, he’s dead, but his body is still walking around, courtesy of an angel.”

“That sounds awful,” Kaia whispered. Claire felt like someone was clutching onto her heart and was pulling at it, and she thought that maybe this was the first time that she was expressing her thoughts and feelings about her dad’s possession. She clenched her hands into fists to stop them from shaking and she continued on.

“His name’s Castiel,” she said. “He’s not so bad now, but back then – I… Angels took my whole family.” Claire had to stop and take in a deep breath before she continued. “My mom – it was even worse. She went missing for years, and I went looking for her. It turned out that she was being drained by an angel called a Grigori. He tried to kill me, but my mom protected me…and then I killed him. And now…”

She thought she had come to acceptance with the grace that now mingled with her soul, but the thought of it made her nauseous, like there was something dark inside of her that she couldn’t remove.

“Claire,” Kaia said softly, but Claire wanted to finish the story now that she had started it.

“When I killed him – I used his sword – the angel sword. And I – since I’m supposed to be an angel vessel – I accidentally – my soul… I absorbed him. His grace. And I didn’t know. Not until I met Anael, and she said something about my grace. I thought it was Castiel’s at first – when I was twelve, I gave him permission – it was a bad situation – and he took over my body. I – I still remember it. But it wasn’t him. It was Tamiel, the one who killed my mom. And not only that –”

Claire knew that she was rambling at this point, bordering on hyperventilation from the way she was taking in short breaths. Kaia must have felt it too, and she placed her hand on top of Claire’s hand, squeezing it reassuringly. “It’s okay,” she said, and Claire nodded, still not looking at her and trying to find the breath to continue.

When she felt like she was steady again, she continued. “My grace – since it comes from a Grigori, it feeds on human souls,” she explained, and she could feel the queasy feeling returning. She stopped for a moment until it faded away before she continued. “And when I was in the Bad Place with you – when you…died, my grace… It took your soul. I took half of your soul with me.”

There was a silence, and Claire could feel Kaia’s grip on her hand tighten on hers, giving her support rather than rejecting her outright. Feeling encouraged, she took a deep breath and explained the rest of the story – how her killer had shown up with an army of demons, but it had turned out to be none other that Kaia herself – or at least her body. She told her about how the Collector of spirits was looking for the other half of Kaia’s soul inside of Claire’s grace, and how she and Dumah had entered into the Collector’s dreams to be here right now. When she finished her story, she felt like she had just spun something out the blue, and for a moment, she wasn’t sure if Kaia really believed her.

“My body was possessed?” Kaia asked, and Claire nodded wordlessly. “By what you believe to be Death, from this world,” she mulled, though the tightness in Claire’s hand indicated that Kaia was anxious at the thought. “Maybe that’s why I’m stuck here. I can’t move on.”

“Maybe,” Claire said.

“We need to get to the top of that mountain, then,” Kaia said, looking at Claire with determination. “I know that there’s something up there, and if I can only get to it…”

“We’ll do it tomorrow,” Claire agreed. “Let’s get some rest for now.”

Though Kaia looked slightly reluctant, she agreed, settling down into her spot in the lean-to and letting go of Claire’s hand. Feeling a little self-conscious, Claire moved to the far side, lying down in the pile of leaves that Kaia had laid down as bedding, and tried to fall asleep. Talking about her experiences with angels had been heavy for Claire, but she was glad that Kaia hadn’t shunned her off right away, like she thought she would.

There was something uncanny about the night. It felt lifeless, missing the sounds of wildlife around them, like the air itself was holding its breath. The only thing Claire could hear was the occasional rustling of leaves and branches. Her thoughts flitted to Dumah and what the angel would say if she knew that Claire had shared all the information with Kaia. There was no doubt that she would be mad, but at this point, Claire was convinced that this really was Kaia – or at least the part of her soul that was stuck within the Collector of spirits.

“You don’t have memories of the djinn world, right?” Claire asked into the silence. There was a long period of silence where Claire thought that Kaia had already fallen asleep, but then she spoke.

“No, I don’t,” she said. “I think that might have been the other part of my soul, if it was really me.”

In a different situation, it might have even seemed romantic to be talking about _souls_ and _other halves_ , but in Claire and Kaia’s case, it was distinctly unromantic.

Though something was running in her mind about the dreams she would have about Kaia, and the conversation from earlier about angels.

“In one of the dreams I had with you,” Claire started, staring up at the foliage, “you asked me if I ever wanted to be normal. I said no back then, but I thought about it, and I thought that I did want to be normal. Though now… I’m not so sure anymore.” After all, she would have been much better off without angels in her lives, but she wasn’t sure if she was willing to let go of her adoptive family – and Kaia too.

Even though she knew that Kaia was going to leave eventually – to heaven or wherever souls go after they’re released. The sooner she accepted that, the better off she would be when it actually happened, she told herself. She felt comfortable and safe with Kaia now, but she knew that she would have to let her pass on eventually when the time came. This wasn’t a chance to bring Kaia back to life.

“I think I know how you feel,” Kaia said, and Claire waited, breathing shallowly while she anticipated Kaia’s next words, but they didn’t come, and Claire could soon hear soft snores fill the air. She turned around in her own bedding, staring at Kaia’s dark curls illuminated in the light and closed her eyes to sleep.

 

iii.

When they woke up in the morning, they gathered all their supplies before they set off once again. The lighting hadn’t changed, but Claire figured that it was just their internal circadian rhythm that had them both up and active at approximately the same time.

They set off again along the dirt path, though this time, the atmosphere was definitely less tense than yesterday. They talked quietly as they walked along, travelling almost alongside of each other instead of Claire trailing silently behind Kaia.

“And you’ve been walking this path ever since you died?” Claire asked, and Kaia nodded.

“I wouldn’t come here out of my own will, but I know there’s something up there on that mountain that I need to reach.”

Claire thought about it for a second. “Do you think maybe it’s the part of your soul that’s trapped in the Collector or something like that?”

Kaia shrugged. “I wouldn’t really know for sure,” she said. “But I think that sounds about right.” She threw her head back and laughed humorlessly. “You know, it’s kind of funny that I would spend my afterlife travelling across the Bad Place. I mean…this place…has brought me nothing but pain in life.”

Claire’s heart ached at her words. “Kaia…”

She took in a deep breath and shook her head. “No, sorry. I’m okay. Let’s just keep going.”

Reluctantly, Claire dropped the topic and they continued heading forward. After a while, they reached what appeared to be the base of the mountain, the pathway starting to gently slope upwards.

“It’s usually around here, that I pass out,” Kaia noted out loud, beginning to climb up the slope. “Something always pushes me back. But maybe with the Collector out of the way in real life, we can make it.”

“Well, let’s hope,” Claire said, jogging forward so she could catch up with Kaia.

As they continued upwards, the slope began to grow steeper. Claire noticed the point where the dirt path completely ended and gave way to the vegetation, and she eyed Kaia cautiously, waiting for something to show up and drag them away from the mountain. Though it didn’t happen, Kaia’s eyes kept darting around quickly like she was expecting to be jumped.

Minutes passed, and they were still allowed to continue their progress uphill, and Claire carefully took that as a win. “You’ve never been passed that point, have you?” she asked Kaia. The other girl had taken over the lead in their climb, so the only thing that Claire could see were her dark curls falling down her back, but Claire could still notice the tension that she was carrying in her shoulders.

“No,” Kaia answered. “It might be because I’m with you right now, but we should still keep alert.”

Claire didn’t have to be told twice. During their whole journey to the mountain, they hadn’t encountered a single monster, which Claire found a bit odd. In Kaia’s other trips towards the mountain, she had rarely occurred one of the resident monsters. Kaia had chalked it up to her being dead, but still she said she was careful to tread the paths with the most coverage. The dirt path she had made throughout her multiple journeys was a safe route that she had designated after some trial and error, though Claire couldn’t believe that it would ever be _this_ quiet, even in routes that monsters rarely frequented.

Still, Claire thought. It could be a sign that Dumah was doing her job well. After all, the angel had gone off to hunt the monsters coming after them, and she hadn’t returned to meet them, so Claire assumed that she was still out there. She looked behind her and out into the woods below. Now that they were further above the ground level, she could see the stretch of trees and woodlands that went on and on into the horizon. The sky was the same dim colour that lit up the entire place, like the sun had been permanently masked by the clouds. For some reason, the sight of this place sent a shudder down her spine. Despite all the life it was surrounded with…it felt entirely dead, like there was not a thing alive here except for the two of them, and Claire had to wonder if this feeling had to do with the Collector’s – Death’s – absence from this world.

The only thing to find out would be to release Kaia’s soul first, she thought to herself, turning around and continuing the climb. Her legs were getting tired from all the uphill walking, though Kaia showed no signs of stopping, and she didn’t look like she was going to give in any time soon.

As they got higher on the mountain, the vegetation grew few and sparse, opening way to the dry ground and rocks. Claire was half-expected to be greeted with a cliff that they would have to scale, but there were none. There was, however, a carcass lying in the middle of their path.

Kaia jolted backwards, crashing into Claire and knocking her back a few steps. She had to plant the heel of her foot down to stop herself from tumbling down the hill. Looking over Kaia’s shoulder though, Claire could see what had shocked her. Lying prone on the ground was one of those things that had chased Kaia when they first met. Claire could remember Alex dissecting the thing without even squirming.

“Is it sleeping?” Claire whispered, feeling her heart thumping hard in her chest.

“No… It’s dead. Been dead for a while,” Kaia answered steadily, taking a step forward away from where her back was pressed against Claire’s chest, and Claire wasn’t sure if she wanted to know how Kaia could tell just from looking. In Claire’s eyes, it looked like there was not a single day of decomposition on its body, though she wasn’t sure how monster biology worked, especially ones from the Bad Place. “Let’s just keep going.”

They gave the body a wide berth, both of them wary that it would come to life when they least expected it and make a grab for them. It didn’t, and Claire was relieved to see the figure get further and further away until she couldn’t see the dead monster anymore, though she kept glancing behind her. For the rest of the climb to the top, Kaia was quiet, and Claire hoped that she wasn’t too shaken up from seeing one of the monsters that roamed the Bad Place.

Finally, they reached the top, and Claire had to admit that the climb and less arduous than she had expected it to be. The dead ground slowly began to even out until it reached a flat plateau, and the earth stretched out beyond them for about a hundred or so yards until it dropped again on all sides.

And straight in the center…

“What is that thing?” Claire asked, looking at the darkened pit that seemed to have opened up in the very middle. The darkness extended outwards, wispy black smoke curling into the air, and Claire had a feeling that this was what Kaia’s was being drawn towards. Though she wasn’t so sure it contained a ticket out of the Bad Place and into the human afterlife for the other girl.

“Only one way to find out,” Kaia replied, and they both approached apprehensively. When they got close enough to see it, Claire noticed that it wasn’t just a hole in the middle of the mountain – it looked like the mountain was crumbling at all sides where the hole had started, like the abyss was slowly eating away at the heart of the mountain. It was a few feet wide in diameter – enough for any person to fit through if they decided to jump in. A dark presence streamed out from it, distorting the air above it like a heatwave, and Claire suddenly felt the urge to turn back and run.

She looked at Kaia, who looked like she wanted to be sick all over the floor. “Is this what you were looking for?” she asked her.

“I – maybe,” Kaia admitted. “But it feels – wrong. I don’t –”

“Glad to see that you’ve made it,” a voice behind them called, and they spun around to see Dumah the angel strolling casually up to them. She looked out of place in her sleek monochrome clothing against the pallid cold-blue environment, her angel blade hidden out of sight, and her hands pulling her cardigan tightly around her shoulders.

“You were waiting for us?” Claire asked incredulously, and Dumah guffawed.

“No,” Dumah said. “I just got here. But it seems like the mystery has been solved.” Claire looked from the abyss to Kaia in confusion, not fully getting at what Dumah was trying to convey. “The abyss,” Dumah explained, indicating down at the swirling darkness. “I believe Kaia’s soul may have been chained to the Bad Place, somehow. It’s down there.”

Claire and Kaia exchanged a look, and from her wide eyes, Claire could tell that Kaia definitely did not want to explore the abyss.

“You want me to jump in?” Kaia asked timidly, backing away from the abyss and shaking her head. “No. No, I’m not going down there.”

Dumah gave both Claire and Kaia a look, and Claire felt like the angel was going to pick Kaia up and fling her into the abyss and be done with it. She wouldn’t put it past angels to do something like that. Taking a protective step in front of Kaia, she stared Dumah down, almost daring her to go ahead and throw both of them in there.

Dumah opened her mouth, about to speak, but then there was another intruder.

A tall black woman dressed in form-fitting clothes seemingly stepped straight out of the darkness, and Claire was certain that she had just appeared out of nowhere. Everything about her radiated power, from her neatly trimmed curly hair to the heels that she was wearing, and Claire was instantly on guard, appreciating the sound of Dumah’s angel blade sliding out from her sleeve. Was this the real form of the Collector of spirits, now that they had gotten this close to – whatever this was?

“My, my, my,” she said, crossing her arms and eyeing the three of them with interest. “When I got word that you were messing around with spirits in the afterlife, I had to come see what you were doing. But never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that you would try to unchain the god of slumber – or the Collector of spirits, as you call them – and release them in our reality.”

“What are you talking about?” Claire asked the same time Kaia’s voice piped in with, “Who are you?”

A half-smile grew on her lips, and she uncrossed her arms and stood at her full height. “Apologies for not introducing myself. The name’s Billie, or now better known as Death. From our world, at least.”

Claire found herself staring with her mouth opened in shock, and Kaia blurted out, “Death?”

“Why are you here?” Dumah said, her voice nearly a hiss, and her hand still gripping the angel blade tightly. Claire didn’t know a lot about angel relationships to other powerful beings, but from Dumah’s reaction, she could probably guess that angels and Death didn’t always get along, strange as it was.

Billie looked at Dumah through curious eyes, tilting her head slightly before she chuckled. It unnerved Claire, and between facing Death and facing the abyss behind her, she wasn’t sure where her chances were. “And I could ask the same thing of you,” Billie said, lowering her head slightly at Dumah, “the Collector of spirits.”

Claire spun and looked at Kaia with wide eyes, but Kaia wasn’t looking at her. Instead, she was gasping at Dumah, who let out a short hissing sound. For a moment, Dumah didn’t look like a heavenly warrior of the Lord anymore – she looked…different. Like something else entirely. She spun her angel blade in her hand like she was preparing to strike at Billie, but then she snapped her fingers, disappearing like the air was sucked in around her, leaving only a vacuum where she once was.

“What –” Claire nearly fell backwards. “What just happened?”

“That was not an angel,” Billie said. “And this place… This is dangerous for the both of you. You were led here by the Collector of spirits – the god of slumber, or as you know them – Dumah.”

This was all too much for Claire to process. Her head was still spinning from the revelation, and she was sure anything she said would just be spluttering. So the Collector of spirits…the god of slumber…Death, or whatever other names they also carried…had been Dumah all along? But wasn’t Dumah helping them? And how hadn’t Anael known? Was Anael also part of the conspiracy? Did that mean that Dumah was possessing Kaia’s body along with an angel’s body?

“But then my body –” Kaia started before she stopped herself, looking unsure of what she wanted to say.

“It’s a lot to understand, I know,” Billie said in an almost pitiful tone. “But that was without a doubt, the god of slumber in disguise. I don’t know what this world’s Death is doing roaming ours, but it can lead to nothing good.” She strolled up to the two of them, and Claire leapt backwards, afraid that Billie was going to touch her forehead and send her immediately to her demise, but she was only interested in something else.

Billie knelt down on one knee and dipped her hand into the dark abyss while the both of them watched her. The darkness swirled around her hand and up her arm in spirals, like it was trying to pull her in. Vaguely, Claire thought that she could hear faint whispering, telling her to come closer, and she had taken a step forward towards the abyss before Kaia’s hand shot out to stop her, along with a warning look. Claire blinked a couple of times, trying to shake the feeling off, focusing on the warmth of Kaia’s touch through her shirt. Meanwhile, Billie had her eyes closed, unaffected by the wave of darkness that seemed to be pushing out from the abyss. Claire felt like she she was being spun around until she felt sick, and looking at Kaia, it seemed like she too felt nausea with every pulse of the abyss.

Finally, Billie withdrew her hand and stood up, opening her eyes. It almost looked like the darkness was swirling around her face for a second before she blinked it away. Her expression was grim, and Claire didn’t know if she wanted to hear what Billie had to say about what she saw.

“Normally, I don’t help people with these things,” Billie prefaced. “But this time is an exception. It appears that the Collector of spirits – the god of slumber, had captured your soul and anchored you right here in this spot many years ago when your soul had wandered into this place during your dreamwalking,” she told Kaia, who was looking up at Billie with a mixture of fear and apprehension.

“In return, you could never leave, and that left a split in your soul where you started to fracture into two. One in our world, and one here,” Billie explained. “When you died, it wasn’t a death. It was a reunion.”

“What are you talking about?” Claire demanded. Her heart was thumping hard in her chest. Though she was following what Billie was saying, she wasn’t sure if she was hearing things right. She was so certain that Kaia’s soul had to move on to the afterlife, but now it sounded almost like Billie was saying something else.

“I’m getting to it,” Billie said with a pointed look at Claire. “Kaia, is it? You didn’t die here. You were reborn as one whole person again. That is, you would have become whole, if things went right. But it didn’t go right, because there was a presence here that absorbed part of the soul that was trying to reunite with your other part.”

“The Grigori angel grace,” Claire whispered, and Billie nodded slowly.

“Not only that, but the Collector of spirits wanted you to die here, so your two soul fragments could reunite in this world, not ours, and thereby trapping your soul in this world. They wanted you to become the new Death, though for reasons I don’t understand,” Billie said, grimacing. “But because of Claire, you couldn’t, and they were pushed into action.” She pointed at the abyss. “This over here – this is where your soul has been tethered by the Collector of spirits.”

“So – what does this all mean?” Kaia asked desperately, like she was trying to understand what was going on now that Billie had shed light on things that was all clicking together. The reason why Kaia was always drawn to the Bad Place while she was dreamwalking was because part of her soul was actually tied to this place by this world’s Death. It was bizarre, Claire thought, to have your soul split up into pieces that they were yearning to get back to one whole piece. She felt guilt stir inside of her, remembering what her grace had done.

“It means that the person in your body in our world was always you,” Billie said. “I had also assumed that it was the Collector of spirits when I first caught wind of the whole situation, but I was wrong. The person in your body right now is you, as you are right now.”

“But I don’t remember any of the stuff I did,” Kaia argued. “The demon army I had – I don’t remember that. It wasn’t me.” She shook her head vehemently, and Claire wanted to pipe in and stand on her side, but she wasn’t so sure anymore. She always thought that Kaia’s body was possessed, but now Billie was offering the frankly horrible alternative that Kaia was always in control of her own body. She could understand why Kaia balked at that idea.

“Of course you wouldn’t remember,” Billie said, and Claire couldn’t tell if her tone was mocking or pitiful. “You only have one half of your soul right now. When you split a human soul – well let’s just say things don’t look so pretty. You claiming to be the Collector of spirits was your soul trying to assert your new position as Death. But since your soul is broken up, it wasn’t _all_ your actions and your choices. To simplify it, this world was controlling your conscious actions.” She gestured to the dark landscape around them. “The only way to regain full control of your body again and expel this world’s hold on your consciousness is to stitch your soul back together. And the other part of your soul is stuck inside her grace.” She looked over at Claire. Claire, meanwhile, felt like she had just gotten on a roller coaster and couldn’t get off of it.

“Wait, but the demons –” Claire began, but Billie cut her off.

“I understand this is a lot to learn. But first things first. We need to get you two out of here and remove the last piece of Kaia’s soul from your grace,” Billie said.

Claire was just about to ask how Billie planned on doing that when Claire didn’t even know herself when Billie pressed the palm of her hand against both Claire and Kaia’s foreheads before they could protest. Claire’s fear of Billie instantly killing her came back, and she opened her mouth to yell, bracing herself to fight back in any way possible, but the moment Billie’s cool palm touched her forehead, she felt like she was being pulled somewhere else, and all the fight drained out of her. When she blinked, she found herself in another place entirely.

Except this time, it was all too familiar.

Claire jolted back, nearly knocking herself off the boat and into the blue waters below. She steadied herself on the sides of the rowboat until it calmed down again, rocking gently against the tranquil waters. “Again?” she muttered to herself, catching sight of Jody’s house in the distance. They were back in the lake from Claire’s djinn dream, floating atop in the same old rowboat.

“Where are we?” Kaia said, and Claire whipped her head over to see that Kaia was here too, like usual. Except this time, she was wearing the same baggy sweater she wore during their hike in the Bad Place, and now that they were in the sunlight, Claire could see that her clothes and hair was streaked with dirt from their travel. Claire could guess that she looked equally unkempt. Kaia was frowning, looking over the side of the boat and nearly tilting it over.

“Careful,” Claire warned, moving her weight to the other side in an attempt to keep the balance. She had a suspicion to why Billie had sent them here, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to play with the idea. Kaia, however, had other thoughts, and Claire was none too surprised to see Kaia’s growing interest in the lake. The other girl dipped her hand in the water, scooping up water droplets and letting them run through her hand. In the bright light, it appeared to glow a vividly clear blue, and Kaia retracted her hand immediately like it burned her.

“The colour,” she started, looking at Claire with wide eyes in alarm. “It’s –”

Claire had this thought in the back of her mind for a while, creeping in the corners of her mind where she refused to entertain it. But after all that had happened and all that Billie had told them, she knew exactly what the colour of the lake reminded her of.

“Angel grace,” Claire finished grimly. The whole lake was made out of angel grace, and if she was right – it was _her_ angel grace. The djinn had crafted a world inside of her head using existing material from her reality, and this was part of it. It also explained the queasy feeling she would get when she looked at it for a second too long. It felt unnatural, like it was a sore blight in the world, but it was also beautiful and serene, and the two ideas didn’t battle out well in her head.

Kaia was pointing at the lake now. “There’s that same feeling I had in the Bad Place,” she told Claire. “I – there’s something down there.”

And there it was – Claire’s dreaded nightmare where Kaia would insist for Claire to venture alone into the depths of the lake. But now that she had an idea of what the lake was, she understood. She had Grigori grace, meaning that she fed on human souls. And the only human soul found in her capacity…was Kaia’s. Kaia’s soul was at the bottom of the lake – the center of her grace.

Forcing herself to look overboard, she peered into the waters, squinting like she expected to see Kaia’s soul burning bright red in the very center. There was nothing except for the soft blue glow, and Claire reached out to touch the grace-water, surprised to find that it didn’t sting or burn – it just felt like she was submerging herself in cold water.

If she wanted to help Kaia in whatever way she could, then she had to go down there, she thought. She swallowed her fears and turned to face Kaia, who was staring at her with a look of apprehension. “Let’s go in,” Claire said, holding back the overwhelming feeling of dread that clutched her heart.

“Inside the lake?” Kaia asked, and Claire nodded before she could lose her nerve and back out of it.

“It’s…the grace that my soul merged with,” Claire explained cautiously, seeing the way that Kaia immediately softened to give her a pitying frown. “When it…fed on your soul.”

Kaia nodded in understanding, and Claire was surprised to see that she still wasn’t recoiling in disgust after all that Claire had told her. Angels and demons and now angel vessels that had merged with a Grigori’s grace and was feeding on Kaia’s soul? If it were Claire, she would have run away a while ago. But here Kaia was, looking at Claire with a kind of trust that Claire didn’t think she had earned.

“Then let’s get going,” Kaia said, and without warning, she stood up, swinging her weight dangerously to one side and tipping the rowboat over.

The first thing Claire was aware of was the coldness that immediately slapped against her skin. She wanted to gasp for air, but she immediately put her hands over her mouth, a stream of bubbles escaping as she held her breath underwater. The rowboat hovered upside-down above them, casting a shadow of darkness overhead.

Though the waters seemed impenetrable while they were on the boat, things were crystal clear underwater like Claire was going for a dip in an empty swimming pool. Kaia grabbed her hand and pulled her out from underneath the boat, her curly dark hair like a nest above her head, and her clothing puffed up like she was being filled with air. She pointed downwards, and Claire followed her finger to see that there was a speck of light in the distance, like a flashlight was at the bottom.

This had to be where Kaia’s soul was, Claire thought, and she and Kaia nodded, angling their direction downwards and beginning their descent into the depths of the water, using their arms like they were pushing away the water in front of them. But too soon, Claire felt like she was running out of breath, and she couldn’t take it anymore. She moved herself upright and shot up, kicking against the water like her life depended on it. Far below, she had the vague sensation that Kaia was following her, but she was only focused on the sunlight breaking the water above her.

Claire surfaced, gasping in the fresh air and nearly choking on the water, coughing and spluttering while she tried to calm her racing pulse. She treaded the water in panic, watching Kaia emerge soon afterward. Her hair was sticking against her face, and she turned to look at Claire. “I can’t do it,” Claire said before Kaia could say anything, her head barely above the water line. The cold water was now freezing to Claire, and she felt like her muscles were starting to slow down even though she was kicking frantically underwater in an attempt to stay afloat.

“You can,” Kaia said, moving closer to Claire and staying above water with an ease that Claire wished she had. “I don’t want to push you, but I need you to help me. My – soul – is fractured. Has been for a long time, apparently.”

“Kaia,” Claire tried to interrupt. She had now managed to grab onto a part of the capsized rowboat to stabilize herself above water.

“I’ve never felt right, my entire life and maybe this is why. But this time, if we can get down there… Claire, please. I need your help, one more time if it’s the last thing I ask.”

Kaia was looking at her through imploring eyes, treading the icy water and looking ready to go under at any moment, but she had held out her hand to Claire, her palm open towards the sky. Claire bit her lip, thinking back to the first time they travelled through the Bad Place together. It had ended in complete disaster, even though Claire had tried everything in her power to keep Kaia safe.

And now, Kaia was asking her to come with her again, and Claire wasn’t sure if she could without majorly screwing things up, just like the last time. But maybe, she thought, maybe this was a chance to redeem herself for her failures.

Claire closed her eyes for a moment, half-hoping that everything was just going to disappear when she opened her eyes, but it was all still the same: Kaia was treading against the cool blue waters in front of her, her curly hair soaked and sticking against her face while she stared pleadingly at Claire, one of her hands outstretched on the water towards her.

“Okay,” Claire finally agreed, letting go of the boat and allowing her drenched clothing to drag her back down into the water. She felt the guilt stabbing through her at the utter look of belief and trust in Kaia’s eyes still there after all that had been revealed. She didn’t think she deserved all of this trust just yet, but maybe she could earn it back bit by bit. She reached forward with one hand and grabbed onto Kaia’s cold hands, and with a nod, they both took a breath and dived down together.

Claire forced her eyes open, feeling the stinging pain of the freezing water in her eyes, but she pressed on, pushing downwards against the water. She could see more clearly now in the distance that it looked like there was a flash of light at the bottom, shining clearly against the darkening waters the deeper they went. Claire swam towards it, feeling the tightness in her chest from the lack of oxygen, but she knew that she had to keep going down.

They were barely twenty feet away when Claire felt like the pressure was going to explode in her lungs. She tugged backwards for a second, pulling Kaia with her before she forced herself to keep going. She could barely feel her legs at this point through the coldness, but all she had to do was reach the light… After that, well she wasn’t so sure, but Kaia had asked her for help and she would be damned if she failed her again.

Kaia was also showing signs of distress now, and Claire could see that she looked just as ready to escape as she was, but they had to keep going. A few more feet forward, and Claire stretched her hand out as far as it could go, trying to touch the ball of white-blue light that floated tantalizingly in front of her.

She and Kaia reached it at the same time, their hands dipping into the heated ball of light, and then, almost imperceptibly, the ball seemed to grow in size, the intensity of the brightness increasing so quickly that Claire was forced to look away, closing her eyes tightly and holding her breath while her lungs screamed as the lake burst into light.

 


	5. Act Five

ACT FIVE

The Final Resolve

 

i.

“Kaia!”

Claire didn’t know why she blurted out her name, but it was the first word to exit her mouth when she shot up from her spot in the couch, feeling like her head was whirling for a second before she was able to steady herself with one hand on her seat. Her eyes skirted around the room, confused when she realized that she was no longer in the angel grace lake but back in Jody’s living room. Her sight landed on Rowena, who had stood up from the seat across from her in surprise.

Claire scanned her surroundings, only seeing Anael in vicinity, leaning against the doorframe and watching Claire with a frown. For one second, Claire thought she could see something that looked like angry red burns on Anael’s collar, but she shifted a bit and they were covered up by the fabric of her clothes. She shook the image out of her head, remembering something far more important about the angels in her life: ‘Dumah’.

But first…

Kaia was still lying down on the couch, the large robe dwarfing her smaller figure. Though Claire could see it – the faint twitch of her eyelids as she struggled awake.

“Kaia,” Claire called her name again, moving from her spot over to where Kaia – not the Collector – was lying on her back, a look of pain flashing across her features.

“Hold it right there,” Rowena said, moving to grab her arm. “I would certainly advise against that. Luckily, I’ve prepared for the worst and –”

“It’s not the Collector,” Claire said, spinning around to face her. “It’s Kaia. The real Kaia. The whole time we thought that –”

Anael had untangled herself from the doorframe and was now approaching them. “Slow down,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

Kaia was groaning now, rolling over to the side while Rowena looked at her like she was about to whip out a dangerous spell at any moment, and it took all of Claire’s will not to throw her arms around Kaia and shout for all of them to stop. She had to slow down. She took a deep breath before she opened her mouth and tried to speak, but someone else made it first.

“The girl lying there is not the Collector you’re looking for,” a smooth voice cut in, and they all turned around to be faced with a woman dressed in all black.

“Death,” Anael said, and Claire thought that she could hear a bit of animosity in her voice, but while the angel definitely tensed up, she didn’t seem like she was gearing up for any sort of fight like ‘Dumah’ had been.

Billie gave her a thin smile before she turned to look at Rowena. “We meet again.”

“Glad to see that you’re looking just well as the last time,” Rowena said with an easy grin, like she was greeting an old friend, though Claire didn’t miss the way her fists clenched and then unclenched, lying flat by her sides.

“Wait, how do you know each other?” Claire asked, looking between the two of them. She couldn’t fathom where they would have met, but then again, Rowena was a powerful witch, and Claire wouldn’t be surprised if she dabbled in all sorts of dark activities that drew the attention of Death herself.

“Oh, you know. A girl’s got to have friends and connections in all kinds of places, isn’t that right, Billie?”

“Sure,” Billie said in monotone without change in demeanour, and Claire got the feeling that their relationship was a little more complicated than how Rowena was portraying it.

“Where’s everyone else?” Claire asked, suddenly remembering the others, looking around the room. She spotted Charlie, who was emerging from the kitchen doorway.

“Asleep. It’s been hours since you went to dreamland,” she said with a yawn, stretching her arms in the air and assessing the situation in front of her. She met Claire’s eyes and nodded. “Don’t worry, I’ll go wake everyone else up.” She left for the bedrooms, and Claire didn’t miss the way that Billie stared after the young woman curiously before she turned her attention back to the group when Kaia let out another agonized sound, rolling onto her stomach, the robe completely encompassing her body.

“She’s fine,” Billie said when she saw Claire’s look of concern. “She’s merging two different experiences of herself into one: her severed soul is attempting to stitch itself back together.”

“Her severed soul?” Anael cut in, taking a step forward and then stopped herself from walking any closer to Billie. “But isn’t this Death from an alternate reality, if sources were correct?”

Before Billie could answer that, Kaia turned over again, nearly rolling onto the floor if Claire wasn’t there to support her body and push her gently back onto the couch. Kaia opened her eyes for the first time, blinking a couple of times at the ceiling. Then she turned her head, and her gaze landed on Billie. She opened her mouth to speak, coughing for a moment until she managed to get the words out. “Are you going to kill me?”

Claire felt a lump in her throat, and she looked over at Billie. She hadn’t thought this through, but now that Kaia had mentioned it, it seemed like a possibility. After all, Kaia had died in the Bad Place, taking a spear meant for Claire. And now she was here again…alive and whole, and surely there had to be some sort of catch. She tensed up, ready to step in front of Billie and defend Kaia’s life.

But Billie only smiled. “No,” she said, tilting her head to the side, much to Claire’s surprise. She could hear Kaia’s audible sigh of relief at the news. “It’s not your time. Yet. But we have other things to discuss first.”

Right on cue, Charlie strolled into the room with some of the others in tow. Jody and Donna appeared in their pajamas, both looking tired but expressions grim. Jody’s eyes immediately went to Claire, and Claire saw the way that she instantly softened in relief though it was short-lived when she spotted Kaia awake beside her.

“Claire,” she said, alarm ringing in her voice. “Behind you –”

“She’s fine,” Billie said, her commandeering voice cutting off all potential argument, though it didn’t stop Donna from narrowing her eyes suspiciously at her.

“Who are you?” she asked, and Claire wanted to dash in front of Donna when Billie turned her eyes onto the other woman. She remembered what it was like to feel Death’s presence when they had reached the top of the mountain, and she thought that she could feel the same stinging coldness right now.

“Death,” Billie said calmly, the word managing to hold weight and still sound offhand at the same time. Claire saw Donna’s mouth gape open while she turned to look at Jody, who looked just as bewildered as she was.

“Why are you here?” Jody demanded without moving from her spot.

“Though I don’t like involving myself in human matters, this situation is spinning out of control,” Billie said, turning her attention to the entirety of the group. “The god of slumber, known to you as the Collector of spirits or the Death of that world, is not inhabiting that girl,” she explained coolly. “But they are running amok here, and it would be unwise to leave a world devoid of death.”

To Claire’s mind, a world being ‘devoid of death’ didn’t sound so bad, but she remembered the body of the monster lying on the mountain, and how it looked like it was only sleeping even though Kaia said that it had been long dead. She couldn’t forget the eerie way that she still felt like life was going to burst from its body and reanimate it at any moment.

“So where are they then?” Anael asked, still looking wary.

“Dumah,” Claire found herself saying without thought. All eyes turned to focus on her, and she tried not to shrink back. “Dumah was a fake,” she explained. “There was no Dumah in the first place.”

Now Anael’s eyebrows were scrunching together in thought. “How could she be fake? I can sense angel grace. That was the angel Dumah, without a doubt.”

Billie shook her head, holding out her empty palms in a shrug-like gesture. “Wrong,” she said. “The god of slumber is an expert of disguises, especially when it comes to impersonating those in charge of death. The Dumah that you saw – the angel of silence and death – was never the real angel.”

“The angel of silence and death?” Charlie echoed. “I thought they were all just – you know, angels.”

Anael proceeded to an explanation. “Each angel has a specific duty that God created them for,” she recounted. “Though over the millennia, things have changed in heaven, and we don’t adhere to our titles anymore. But even if the Collector were Dumah, I would have known.”

“And that’s where you’ll be wrong again,” Billie answered to Anael’s vexation. “The gates of heaven have been sealed. Surely you must know that has had an effect on your power and vessel?” She raised an eyebrow at Anael, and from the way Anael clenched her jaw, Claire could tell that it hit a sore spot. “But it wasn’t only your closed off power source that misled you,” Billie relented, turning her eyes over to where Kaia had slowly made her way into a sitting position while they were talking. “It was also because of her.”

“Kaia? What did she do?” Claire asked defensively.

“She must have wandered in the Bad Place while she was dreamwalking,” Billie explained. “And for one reason or another, the god of slumber chose keep a part of her chained there. This gave them partial access to our world, and consequently, access to all connections that Kaia has ever made since then.”

“And somewhere along the way, she encountered an angel,” Anael finished, understanding lighting her eyes. “So the Collector posed as an angel to get close to everyone?” She scanned the room of bleary looking humans, and even Claire could tell what she was thinking. _Why them?_

Billie answered for her. “To get close to your demi-angel over there,” she said. “A part of Kaia’s soul was trapped in there after her death. My theory as of now,” Billie mulled, drawing out the word, “is that the Collector wants to absolve their position and give it away to someone else. That someone happened to be Kaia, out of convenience’s sake. They had to kill her in order to complete the transition process, but it failed due to Claire’s presence.”

“But I was the one who tried to get it back when I was – when I wasn’t thinking right,” Kaia interrupted, and all eyes turned to her. She swallowed but continued talking, struggling through the words. “I’m – I’m remembering bits and pieces. Of…being in the Bad Place and killing myself – my other self, when Claire was there the first time.” She turned to Claire like she was looking for an explanation. “And I also remember opening the Rift and dragging Claire into hell with me –” She cut herself with a cry, bending over while she put both hands on her temples.

“Kaia!” Claire said, putting her hands on Kaia’s shoulders, but Kaia kept her head down, low cries of pain coming out of her mouth.

“Her memory is trying to piece itself together,” Billie said, pulling Claire’s hand away, and Claire couldn’t help noticing how cold Billie’s skin felt against hers. “We should let her rest until her soul has restored itself.”

“Well all of this sounds very exciting,” Rowena said, and Claire turned to look at her, having forgotten that the witch was there the entire time. She was sitting back on the couch again, looking thrilled at the change of pace from what was obviously a boring night of watching Claire and Kaia sleep. “Unfortunately, the fake angel disappeared when you started to dream walk, and they don’t seem to be wanting to return any time soon. Not with the witch trials starting right here,” she said, a sardonic grin on her face.

“Then we’ll need to capture them.” Billie started saying something else, but Claire suddenly felt like the floor was moving below her feet. For a moment, she thought that the entire room was swaying precariously, but when she blinked, she was still standing on solid ground and nobody seemed to notice anything odd. She closed her eyes tightly and tried to breathe through her nose, but it only made it worse, like she was being tilted to one side and was hanging upside down. She pressed the palm of her hand to her head, trying to ease the sensation.

Vaguely, she could make out someone calling her name, and she tried to say that she was okay, but before she could, the floor dropped off from beneath her feet, and her consciousness faded to black.

 

ii.

The first thing Claire saw when she groggily blinked her eyes opened was Anael, her figure looming over her with an indecipherable expression. She sat up, rubbing her eyes to see that Kaia slept peacefully on the couch on the other side. A quick assessment of the room told her that everybody else was gone, and she guessed that Anael was probably here to babysit her. The thought almost made her laugh; she had figured it out now: Anael was a jobless angel since she had found out about the gates being sealed, and this was the position that she was demoted to.

“Where’s everybody?” Claire asked, shaking off the blanket that had been draped over her. The last thing she remembered was Billie announcing that they had to capture the Collector, and then after that, it was completely blank.

“Away,” Anael said. The pursed line of her lips told Claire that she refused to divulge any more information.

“I blacked out,” Claire said, remembrance dawning on her. Something had suddenly felt wrong, and she couldn’t stand anymore. Maybe it was an after effect of dreamwalking, but she wasn’t sure if that was entirely correct. Rowena would have told her in advance, right? Still, she could feel the vertigo lurking in the back of her head, like it was waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Her hand didn’t feel so steady, and she traced her hand down her leg, gripping onto the cold steel of the angel sword hilt to comfort herself. She had almost forgotten that it was there.

“I’m not surprised,” Anael said, her lips twisting to one side in a grimace. “After all, from what we’ve been told, you just extracted someone else’s soul outside of your body.”

Claire licked her dry lips, remembering the flash of light that exploded in the lake the moment she and Kaia touched it at the same time. “Yeah, so?”

She expected Anael to act exasperated, but the angel only gave her a pitying look. “Don’t you understand?” she asked her. “The grace that mingled with your soul – it’s the grace of a Grigori, and Grigoris need to feed on human souls in order to survive. It must have been dormant for years due to the strange nature of being mixed into a human soul. But then you began feeding.”

To Claire’s ears, this sounded like they were talking about a vampire case. She thought back to the time when she briefly turned into a werewolf, and she wasn’t sure if this angel alternative was any better than the last bad situation she was in.

“Now that Kaia’s soul is out of your system, your grace is hungry for something to consume,” Anael explained, and Claire felt her stomach plummet. Anael leaned forward a little, and something caught Claire’s eyes again – her collar had drifted down a bit to reveal a patch of skin that looked like it was falling off in red patches, and Claire almost recoiled backwards.

“If you don’t feed soon, the grace will turn to its host in an attempt to sustain itself – your soul. It will kill you, Claire.”

Claire was silent while she processed Anael’s words, her eyes still fixed on the patch of skin on Anael’s neck. Anael must have noticed because she stepped back, pulling her collar back up so it was covering the area and cleared her throat.

“What can I do to stop this, then?” Claire accidentally said questioned out loud.

Anael let out a short laugh. “I saw your discomfort, you know. When you asked me if I was possessing Sister Jo, my vessel.”

Claire narrowed her eyes at Anael, not understanding at the point that she was getting at.

“But you know, she really did pray for this. In exchange for her husband’s life,” Anael illustrated, and the revelation didn’t make Claire feel any better. In fact, she had almost overlooked Anael’s vessel, but now it was all coming back to her, including her feelings of uneasiness. “But I saved her husband,” Anael said, tilting her head to look at Claire with an unfamiliar glint in her eyes that made Claire retreat backwards. “And now you… You’re the one who needs to take human souls to live, at the end of the day. You’re the one who needs to find a vessel to latch onto.”

A flash of anger lit up in her chest despite the sudden warning bells that were flashing in her head from Anael’s antagonistic behaviour. “I never asked for this,” Claire hissed. “And I won’t be consuming any human souls, no matter what.”

“I didn’t say it only applied to human souls.”

“What are you talking about?” Claire asked, but her interest was piqued.

“I’m talking about the Collector,” Anael explained. “While you were unconscious, the others planned to have Kaia renounce the title of the new god of slumber when they summoned the Collector. Death is bound to their word, no exceptions. The moment Kaia relinquishes her new title, the Collector is sent back to their world. But if you killed them with your angel sword instead…”

“You want me to kill Death?” Claire exclaimed. “Can you even do that?”

“They’re posing as an angel right now. I would say that in trying to push their title onto Kaia, they’ve given up a lot of their original power.”

“Wait,” Claire said, processing this in her mind. “But then Kaia can’t renounce her title like you said…” She trailed off when Anael nodded. “Then Kaia –”

“Will remain Death in the other world,” Anael said. “I’ve thought this over for a while, and while heaven’s gates remain close, we cannot let any angels or grace die. We’ve lost too much. This is the best compromise I’ve thought of.”

Claire shook her head. “No,” she said, feeling anger stirring in her chest at the thought of leaving Kaia in a world she hated. She knew that Anael only saw her as a useful receptacle of grace, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but she didn’t expect her to want to throw Kaia under the bus so easily. “I’m not absorbing anything to sustain the grace.”

There was a hint of a scornful smile growing on Anael’s face that made Claire angrier, but just then, Kaia let out a groan, and their attention was diverted to the girl struggling to sit up in the couch. Somewhere during the time when Claire was passed out, Kaia had changed into regular clothing, her robe tossed over the top of the couch. To Claire’s embarrassment, she realized that the soft gray and white flannel that Kaia was wearing belonged to her own closet.

“You’re awake,” Kaia said when she noticed Claire sitting on the other side even though she was the one who had just woken up. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Claire said, even though she still felt a little light-headed. “How about you?”

“I’m good,” Kaia replied, offering Claire a small smile. She then glanced over at Anael standing beside Claire, her eyes darting between the two of them, seeming to realize that she must have interrupted a conversation. “I think I need some fresh air,” she said, getting up from her seat.

“I’ll come with you,” Claire said, not wanting to continue talking with Anael. She stood up and felt the unsteadiness on her feet before she managed to stabilize herself again. The light-headedness was coming back, though Claire forced herself to remain upright. Kaia hesitated for a second, glancing over at Anael before she nodded at Claire.

“Fine,” she said, and Claire moved past Anael, almost pushing into her as she followed Kaia out the front door of the house.

But Anael wasn’t finished yet. “Maybe if you reassess your morals and attachments,” Anael called out to her, “you’ll understand what you have to do to keep on going.”

Claire turned to glare at her, but the angel had already turned around and left the room, leaving the two of them alone. Pushing it out of her mind, she followed behind Kaia, not saying anything even when Kaia gave her a concerned look.

“I always keep expecting to see a lake here,” Kaia said, attempting to strike a conversation. Claire looked up from the ground to see that Kaia was staring off at the small patch of forestry lying behind Jody’s house.

“You remember the djinn dream?” Claire asked her. The last time she had told Kaia about that during their time traipsing around in the Bad Place, Kaia had told her that she didn’t remember a lick of it.

Kaia nodded, walking forwards into the shrubbery where the evenly spaced trees provided some shade from the sunlight. “It’s like Billie said, I think. My soul was…split up. I remember being in the djinn world and the lake. But I also remember vying to be the new ruler of hell.” She let out a humorless laugh, and it made Claire want to hold her hand to reassure her.

“That wasn’t you, that was the Bad Place controlling you,” Claire began but Kaia cut her off.

“It wasn’t me,” she agreed, but she didn’t sound like she was totally convinced. “But at the same time…some of it _was_ me. I still remember everything, and I never tried to fight that voice telling me what to do. I’m still trying to come to terms with…what I did to you when I was…”

This was it, Claire thought. Kaia was also feeling the same sense of guilt and shame that Claire had felt when she failed Kaia, and she wanted badly to tell her that she wasn’t in control of herself, even though she couldn’t begin to understand what living with a fractured soul and then regaining all her memories from both lives was like. And Claire wasn’t naïve enough to think that Kaia had never done anything horrible in the life she was leading while trapped in the Bad Place. It was, after all, the part of her soul that manifested as the Collector leading an army of demons.

“What do you think happened to the demons?” Claire asked her as they walked further into the small patch of woodlands.

“Disbanded, probably,” Kaia said with a shrug. “They were kind of fickle. I honestly don’t know, and I don’t want to think about it right now. But Claire, first off, I want to say… I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Claire said, though Kaia was quickly walking away into a deeper part of the area now. She dashed forward despite the headache that was swirling around in her head and threatening to descend, touching onto Kaia’s shoulder to stop her. “You were trying to get a part of your soul back, even if you weren’t in the right mind.”

“I attacked you,” Kaia argued. “I was trying to kill you. I was _going_ to kill you, if things didn’t work out. And I remember every moment – I remember _thinking_ about it. That wasn’t the Bad Place speaking, Claire. That was me – the part of me that wanted the other part of my soul back no matter what.”

That itself was damning evidence, but Claire refused to be swayed. “There were two parts of you that was splintered,” she said adamantly. “The other part of you was fighting to save me.” Before Kaia could challenge her on it, Claire spoke. “In the djinn world. You knew things weren’t real and you got me out of there. If you hadn’t woken me up, maybe I would have died that night in the warehouse.” She didn’t add that Donna and Jody were there fighting for her life, but that was an extra detail Kaia didn’t need at the moment.

Kaia was silent, and Claire knew that she had gotten somewhere with that. “Kaia, I can’t begin to understand what you did, but you have to remember that it wasn’t _all_ you. There was another part of you that was fighting for something _good_ even when you were doing something bad.”

“It’s not all black and white,” Kaia muttered.

“No,” Claire agreed. “But I think you should take that into account too and not be so hard on yourself. Besides, it’s me who should be sorry. I was the one who ate your soul, after all.” It was meant to be sarcastic, but Claire couldn’t help the hint of self-loathing slip in, and Kaia noticed immediately.

“What?” Kaia exclaimed, snapping out of her gloomy state, taking a step closer to her. “Are you still carrying the blame for what happened when I was killed? I told you that it wasn’t your fault.”

Claire bit her lip before she let it go. “I know,” she said, looking down. “But sometimes, I feel like I just don’t…” _Deserve you_ were the words she was thinking of, but it sounded like too much of a bold confession even in her head. “I feel like I didn’t make it up to you. I promised you that I would protect you, but in the end, I couldn’t do it.” Now that she was admitting it out loud once again, she could feel the jabbing pain of that failure deep in her chest.

“Claire,” Kaia said, and Claire looked up to see that she was standing immeasurably close – so close that Claire could see the exact shade of brown her eyes were. Her throat felt dry, but she couldn’t find the will to step backwards. “What happened was not your fault.” Her voice was gentle and soft, her eyes forgiving, and Claire felt the sudden urge to lean forward and –

“You’re right,” a voice said, and they both jerked back from each other, turning to look in the direction of the voice. Just ten feet away, an angel dressed in gray monochrome stood before them, a pleasant smile on their lips and an angel blade in their hand – Dumah. No, Claire thought. It wasn’t Dumah. The real Dumah was sealed behind the gates of heaven with the other remaining angels. This was the Collector of spirits – the god of slumber, as Billie had called them. “Claire, I’m sorry, but you just happened to be in the way of my plans. Don’t feel bad about it.”

“Kaia,” Claire began, about to tell her to stay behind, but Kaia took a step forward.

“No,” she said, looking at Claire with a fiery determination, and Claire thought back to Anael’s words about renouncing her title, but also about what Anael had said about Claire’s Grigori grace. Even now, she could feel the impending headache, looming in the subconscious of her mind. She could almost hear Anael’s words: _Maybe if you reassess your morals and attachments, you’ll understand what you have to do to keep on going._

And then she felt it.

There was a snake crawling around inside of her head, and Dumah and Kaia’s exchange faded into the background. There was a burning feeling in her stomach, gnawing away at her insides until she felt hollow and empty, like she had been cut open and divested of her organs.

_I don’t want to die_ , a voice inside her head whispered, and with shock, she realized that it was her own voice, speaking back to her mind. The snake slivered in her mind, hissing into her ears.

_Kill the Collector._

_Take their soul._

_User your angel sword. Kill them, now. Send them back where they belong. After all they’ve done to you and the people you love, do you really think they deserve to live?_

_I don’t want to die._

_Then exchange their life for yours._

The voices were growing louder until that was all she could hear. Now she recognized what the burning feeling was: _hunger_.

Her angel sword was out, dangling loosely in her hand. She gripped onto the sword, feeling the comfortable balance of the weight. The blade felt hot in her hands, but she couldn’t let go of it, and her grip tightened despite the burn that seared against her skin.

She thought she could hear someone calling her name, but she shook it off, a force pushing her forward to walk forwards and her sword guiding her movements. She narrowed in her focus on the Collector, who was grinning at her, their own angel blade held up in preparation for combat.

Claire dashed forward, slashing with her angel sword, but the Collector sidestepped her attack, and Claire turned around just in time to parry a strike intended for her side.

She moved forward again, searching for a quick killing blow when she felt someone latch onto her free hand. She huffed in annoyance, easily using the butt of the sword to knock the other person backwards.

“So you want to take me on by yourself?” the Collector asked, an entertained smile gracing their lips. “Are you going to try and kill me right here with that angel sword of yours?”

“Yes,” Claire affirmed, holding up her weapon in a ready position. The Collector stood in place, and to Claire’s surprise, dropped their angel blade onto the grass and spread their arms wide open.

“Then kill me,” the Collector taunted. “I’m sick of that awful world, and if the option were to die here or go back, I’d rather die. So kill me, then.”

That sounded good in Claire’s opinion, and she took a step forward, though before she could get any closer, she felt the sword fly out of her hand, like somebody had tied a string around it and pulled hard. It clanged against a tree, falling to the ground with a soft thud, and Claire cursed in irritation. She turned around towards the fallen sword, but before she could even take a few steps forward, she felt something hard smash against the back of her head, and then, the night fell.

 

iii.

A part of Claire wasn’t surprised when she woke up to stare at the patterned tiles of the hospital ceiling. It actually felt nostalgic, to a certain point, and she briefly toyed with the idea of whether or not she was in another djinn dream before dismissing it.

“Claire!” someone said, and Claire turned around to see Kaia in the same gray-white flannel sitting on the chair beside her bed.

“Second time knocked out in one day, huh?” Claire asked, laughing humorlessly. She touched the back of her head and winced at the soreness.

“Sorry,” Kaia said. “It was me. You weren’t responding to me, so I had to do something when you were distracted. It was a pretty big rock,” she added with a cringe.

Claire laughed now, for real. “Nah, that’s okay,” she said, thinking back to the moment when she had lost it. She remembered what Anael had said, about her Grigori grace needing to feed, but she didn’t think it would happen like that. She had just planned to find some alternative to soul feeding when everything was resolved, but now it was looking more and more dire if she lost control so easily like that, especially since she was only in the early stages of hunger. Waiting any longer would make things even worse.

“Patience heard the scuffle,” Kaia explained, pulling Claire out of her thoughts. “She was nearby, and she disarmed you when she saw you attacking them.”

“The psychokinesis,” Claire said, flashing back to when the sword had flown out of her hands. The same thing had happened way back when she used her powers to fling a pipe at Kaia back when she had captured Claire and was pulling her into the Rift. She had no idea that Patience possessed that power, but then again, Patience herself probably didn’t know either until only recently.

“Yeah,” Kaia agreed. “You know, it’s kind of nice being around people who understand what it’s like to have strange powers.” She smiled at Claire, and Claire felt her heart flutter before she forced herself to calm down.

“What happened to the Collector, then?” Claire asked, hoping that she hadn’t done something to throw them terribly offtrack.

Though to Claire’s relief, everything seemed to have gone down fine once she was out of the game. “I renounced my role the way Billie told me to after you passed out,” Kaia explained. “Patience saw the whole thing. They were forced to open the Rift and return back to the Bad Place, and I was unanchored from there, according to Billie before she left.” Kaia let out a hum. “You know, I did feel kind of bad in the end,” she said, a faraway look in her eyes. “They really didn’t want to go back there… I mean, exchanging places with someone without their permission isn’t right but…”

Claire interrupted her train of thought. “You shouldn’t feel bad about it. Sorry for them, maybe.” Yeah, the Bad Place seemed like an awful world to rule over, but after all that had been said and done, she found it hard to feel anything but a hollow pity for the Collector of spirits. “And speaking of sorry… I’m sorry about what happened before you knocked me out,” Claire finally said, looking away from her. “I – my Grigori grace… Anael told me before but –”

“She told us,” Kaia said. She bit her lip, and it was then that Claire noticed how concerned Kaia was for her. She wasn’t sure how long she had been out for, but Kaia must have been sitting in that chair waiting for her to wake up for hours. And Anael definitely would have told everyone the full story, exaggerations about her impending death included. “Claire… I’m worried.”

“I’m fine,” Claire said, even though she felt a wave of dizziness hit her just as she said that. She blinked a few times, trying to calm herself down, and she could tell from Kaia’s expression that she wasn’t buying it.

Kaia hesitated for a moment and then she got up from her seat, and Claire felt a twinge of disappointment at her department, even though she must have been in the hospital for some time. “We’re working on a situation, so don’t go off anywhere.”

“Like you would?” Claire said, smirking a bit at the reminder of Kaia trying to sneak out of the hospital when they first met.

“Shut up,” Kaia said, though a hint of an embarrassed grin was growing on her face. She hesitated for a second before she leaned down, kissing her gently on the cheek. Claire felt herself flush red with embarrassment, her mouth opening but no words coming out. Kaia looked to be in a similar state, mouth opening and closing like she didn’t know why she did that. She turned around with a quick goodbye, leaving Claire alone with only her thoughts for company.

She touched her cheeks, feeling the heat in her face from the encounter.

She must have passed out at some point in her dreamy haze because the next thing she was aware of, Anael was standing in front of her bed with her arms crossed, though she had no memory of falling asleep.

“You’re looking great,” Claire snarked, indicating to the flaking red scars that were now adorning her hands and crawling up the side of her neck to her face.

Anael touched her neck self-consciously but didn’t comment on it. “You tried to kill the Collector and you failed,” she stated, like Claire didn’t already know.

“Yeah,” Claire said, lifting her hands to indicate to the room she was in. “That’s why I’m here.”

If Anael was getting annoyed by Claire’s sarcasm, she didn’t show it. She looked deep in thought, one arm crossed around her chest while the other hung loosely at her side. “Claire,” she said, her tone so serious that it banished away all the cynicism left in Claire’s system.

“I think I may have potentially found a solution to your problem.”

 

EPILOGUE

 

_Four months later_

The sky blazed a gentle orange-pink hue of the setting sun, reflecting against the serene surface of the lake and painting the lake a myriad of sunset colours. The lake was surrounded by an endless number of fall-coloured trees and dark pines, stretching on and on into the distance where a small mountain loomed against the background. On the dock beside Kaia in a foldable chair was Claire, who was leaning back with her eyes closed.

“You sleeping?” Kaia asked, nudging her leg slightly from where she sat cross-legged on the wooden dock.

There was a brief moment of silence before Claire replied. “Are you going to kiss me awake if I do?”

Even after a while of dating, Kaia still felt the hint of a blush creeping across her face. “Don’t joke around,” she said even though she could already anticipate Claire’s response of _I wasn’t joking around_. She quickly changed the topic before it could go down that path. “Besides, the others are here. The last thing we need is for one of them to walk in on us during a camping trip.”

“Not like they don’t already at home,” Claire pointed out, and Kaia had to give it to her. They kept their affection in appropriate places, sure, but Jody’s house was only big enough for so much privacy when you lived with three other women and an occasional visitor.

They giggled over it for a while before they fell back into the peaceful silence while watching the sun set over the horizon of trees. The tranquility of the scene reminded Kaia of that djinn dream she was dragged into all those months ago, though now she had a chance to actually enjoy it.

“I’m really glad you got better so quickly,” she said, mostly to herself, bringing her knees up to her chin and staring up at the warm sky. “You really had me worried when that angel talked about your grace potentially killing you.”

Claire was quiet for a second, and Kaia turned to look at her, noticing the suddenly solemn look on her features. “The truth is…” Claire started quietly, like she was afraid to say it any louder. “I got some help.”

It didn’t sound too good from Claire’s tone, but Kaia wasn’t the one to judge.“What do you mean?” Kaia asked, probing gently in case Claire refused to talk more about it.

“You know how Anael disappeared?” Claire asked her, and Kaia nodded, remembering that they had never heard of the angel after the entire incident. She didn’t think too much about it, especially since Claire had just explained to everyone that Anael had told her she was leaving. “She didn’t actually just leave,” Claire explained. “I actually… My grace…”

Kaia held her breath. Claire hadn’t talked about her grace in a long time – not since the whole incident with the Collector when she first discovered about her grace. “Anael gave me a choice,” Claire said. “After the gates of heaven were sealed off, her grace began to corrode her vessel. She was going to burn the woman out and herself if she continued living in there. And since the gates of heaven were sealed, she would have nowhere to go after her vessel…burned up.” Claire explained, unease clear in her voice at the thought of the vessel being destroyed. “And I needed something to latch onto…in order to survive.”

Kaia was slowly piecing it together now, but she took another look at Claire’s carefully blank expression to see if what she was thinking was really the truth. “You –”

“I’m hosting her grace inside of my body until heaven’s gates are reopened,” Claire said in one breath. “She’s dormant – she swore an oath,” she quickly added. “I don’t feel her presence at all, and she’s not conscious of my life either. I’m kind of like a preserving jar,” Claire said with a humorless laugh. “To make sure her grace doesn’t burn out. She said she’d always preferred to remain on the sidelines than join in battle.”

Kaia was quiet while she tried to understand the decision that Claire had to make. She thought back to their conversation the second time they were in the Bad Place, and she still remembered how much loathing Claire had for angels and angel grace. For Claire to come to the point where she thought agreeing to host Anael was the best choice… It must have been a tough decision.

“Kaia?” Claire asked hesitantly when Kaia still didn’t respond. “Are you okay?”

“I’m shocked,” Kaia admitted. “But I understand why you did it. Or maybe I don’t _understand_ , but I think I understand.” After all, it must have been Claire’s only hope at the time, especially since Claire’s grace could have backfired at any moment and begin to consume her. “But in the long run, what happens when heaven’s gates are reopened?”

Claire shrugged, getting off of her chair and sitting on the dock beside Kaia, their legs touching. She folded the chair up and let it rest lying down on the other side. “Anael goes back,” Claire said. “And I have to figure out another situation. It’s only temporary.”

“Maybe we can ask Rowena for help,” Kaia said, remembering the snarky witch who had restrained her when she was in evil mode.

Claire let out a groan to Kaia’s amusement. “Ugh, not her,” she said. “I already owe her a favour after she helped us capture you, and she still hasn’t come to collect her debt. No way am I asking again.”

Kaia couldn’t help but laugh, leaning to the side so she could kiss Claire. Sure, things sounded rough, but they had gone through months of radio silence from both Rowena and Anael too apparently, so Kaia had hopes that the two of them wouldn’t be going anywhere dangerous anytime soon.

“Hey, lovebirds!” someone called from behind them, and Kaia jerked away so fast that she nearly fell off the dock and into the lake. She turned to see that Alex was waving at them. “Dinner’s ready, no thanks to the two of you!”

“Yeah, we’re coming,” Claire called back, getting up to her feet and still laughing at Kaia’s startled expression. “Come on, let’s get going before they get mad at us.” She reached a hand out and Kaia accepted it, letting Claire pull her up while the two of the ran back to the campsite laughing and chasing each other, the thoughts of yesterday left far behind them.

THE END

 


End file.
